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artwork by year:
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DOGS FISH LANDSCAPES MICE OTHER ANIMALS PEOPLE MONSTERS, ALIENS & MYTHICAL BEINGS
"Painting shows not only the reality, but the dream behind it. It's our
dreams, doctor, that carry us on."
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THE ARTIST AS SHAMAN
Like Shamans, artists have the ability to explore alternative realms and share their connection to nature, mystical energies, dreams and visions. Artists can retrieve healing energy, knowledge, larger truths and ancestral wisdom, to give form to the forces which shape our world.
As Joseph Campbell has explained in "The Masks of God" (1959), "The shaman was to serve as interpreter and intermediary between man and the powers behind the veil of nature." The word shaman is derived from a Tungus word meaning "he who knows." (The Tungus are a people who originated in the Amur River valley and spread into northeastern Asia).
2. The shaman sees a unity between man and animal at this spiritual level. This spiritual level is an "upper world."
3. If one has access to the spirit world, it means the person may possess the powers of animal spirits. Through a personal animal "guardian," the shaman draws upon the spiritual power of the animal clan. (the term "guardian spirit" is common among Native Americans, but you'll find common terms in, e.g., Siberian, Mexican and Central American shamanism).
4. Access to the spirit world was accomplished by a trancelike state, induced by dancing and, some have said, by ingestion of certain substances.
5. Mythical animals are often depicted. For example, in the cave of Lascaux one can see a strangely marked four legged creature with two straight horns, like antennae. It is not an animal of this earth (and has been called, rather incorrectly, l'unicorne). But to the shaman there are no such things as "mythical" beasts. Beasts from the spirit world are just as real as anything else.
6. One can also see various depictions of "anthropomorphs," ghost like creatures with birdlike heads. What they seem to represent are initiates to shamanism, being prepared to take flight to the spirit world.
7. Often the animals depicted (and we're talking about animals with power, e.g., buffalo) are shown to be "floating" in the air, as their spirits might (e.g., the cave at Altamira, Spain).
8. The shaman supplied the "link" for his people between worlds.
---From Jim Bell on the EVOLUTION mailing list.
