Temporary physical injury and blindness are essential to a shaman, for they ultimately enable him or her to see better.
Shamanic injuries lead to a compulsion to cross a bridge from one side of consciousness into another and in effect to join two opposing levels of consciousness together. Traditionally, shamans seek to retain the injurious darts in their bodies in order to keep hold of magic power. Whereas shamanic injury leads to a darkening of normative perceptions, it enhances others. Blindness forces one to rely on senses other than vision. Needing to function without sight or health, one develops aspects of one's awareness that would otherwise never be developed. Nietzsche is typical in this pattern, as is his 20th Century French protégé, Georges Bataille. The result is a "double vision", whereby two levels of reality can be compared and data extracted from combining their vectors in much the same way as the brain combines information from the left eye and the right eye to produce a third level of consciousness -- depth perception.
In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche writes:
Just a bit later on, he says:
As we can see, the representation of "two worlds" of consciousness that have to be bridged by virtue of a necessity stemming from sickness leads to the sense of having a "third sight" -- implicitly a mystical level of vision.
Contrast the use that a shaman can make out of his constitutional blindness with the normative blindness of the one who sees only one world, that being the vision circumscribed by the felt necessity to conform:
Shamanic injuries lead to a compulsion to cross a bridge from one side of consciousness into another and in effect to join two opposing levels of consciousness together. Traditionally, shamans seek to retain the injurious darts in their bodies in order to keep hold of magic power. Whereas shamanic injury leads to a darkening of normative perceptions, it enhances others. Blindness forces one to rely on senses other than vision. Needing to function without sight or health, one develops aspects of one's awareness that would otherwise never be developed. Nietzsche is typical in this pattern, as is his 20th Century French protégé, Georges Bataille. The result is a "double vision", whereby two levels of reality can be compared and data extracted from combining their vectors in much the same way as the brain combines information from the left eye and the right eye to produce a third level of consciousness -- depth perception.
In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche writes:
Even my eye trouble, which at times approached dangerously near blinding, was only an effect [of general exhaustion] and not a cause; for, with every improvement of my general bodily health came a corresponding increase in my power of vision. An all too long series of years meant recovery to me. But, sad to say, it also meant relapse, breakdown, periods of decadence. After this, need I say that I am experienced in questions of decadence? I know them inside and out. Even that filigree art of apprehension and comprehension in general, that feeling for nuances, that psychology of "seeing what is around the comer," and whatever else I may be able to do, was first learnt then, and is the specific gift of that period during which everything in me was subtilized-observation itself, together with all the organs of observation. To view healthier concepts and values from the standpoint of the sick, and conversely to view the secret work of the instinct of decadence out of the abundance and self-confidence of a rich life-this has been my principal experience, what I have been longest trained in. If in anything at all, it was in this that I became a master. To-day my hand is skillful; it has the knack of reversing perspectives: the first reason perhaps why a Transvaluation of all Values has been possible to me alone. (2)
Just a bit later on, he says:
This double series of experiences, this means of access to two worlds that seem so far asunder, finds an exact reflection in my own nature-I have an alter ego: I have a "second" sight, as well as a first. Perhaps I even have a third sight. The very nature of my origin allowed me an outlook transcending merely local, merely national and limited horizons; it cost me no effort to be a "good European." (3) [emphasis added]
As we can see, the representation of "two worlds" of consciousness that have to be bridged by virtue of a necessity stemming from sickness leads to the sense of having a "third sight" -- implicitly a mystical level of vision.
Contrast the use that a shaman can make out of his constitutional blindness with the normative blindness of the one who sees only one world, that being the vision circumscribed by the felt necessity to conform:
One used to fly by vision and now one flies by radar — blindly, as it were. That is the destiny of women within patriarchal societies – to have to rely upon a set of “civilising” values. That way, their navigation systems can always be jammed if they become too vocal. Women who have been “translated” into beings with now ‘ Civilized’ as opposed to natural mannerisms, have been taught to rely only upon those forms of communication that have been narrowly defined as “sensible” according to expectations which are starched, formal and conservative. How does one live within patriarchal society as a woman? Blindly, and disregarding of one’s own experiences, lest they puzzle and derange one enough that one finally takes action. Women are born to be castrated, according to some.
No comments:
Post a Comment