Abstract
Since palaeolithic times, shamans involved animal depictions in cave ceremonies and adopted animals as helping spirits during their trance journeys. This study aims at explaining the rituals with new evidence: the shamans were acting rationally to deal with an inverted otherworld, still rooted in many traditional beliefs, and seen as an impressive natural phenomenon in superior mirages. After experimenting with unhealthy upside down positions, shamans have adopted more convenient ways to “invert” their consciousness by generating oxygen deficiency and trance for entering the inverted world. San rock art from Brandberg, Namibia, is used as a model to learn more about the logic behind shamanistic trance travel, for example aimed at attracting rain. When travelling to an inverted otherworld San shamans used, besides trance-inverting their consciousness, symbols of inversion (inverted sex, inverted body posture and body painting) and were hiding their faces. Negative hand stencils, dotted (mirage) animals and hidden faces were correspondingly used in palaeolithic caves during trance ceremonies. The animals painted on cave walls were aimed at meeting their counterparts in the other world, a condition for the termination of earthly life, to enable their successful hunting. Animals seen to behave “supernaturally” in mirages and mirage phenomena themselves became helping spirits for the voyage. The mirage of earthly objects into the sky itself served as role model for shamanic travel. Voluptuous Venus figures were carved for the inverted world. They show an inversion of reality. The conclusion is that early spiritual and religious concepts developed rationally, like other strategies for survival, in attempts to deal with an occasionally but worldwide seen natural phenomenon which suggested an inverted otherworld.
Highlights
This study aims at explaining the rituals with new evidence: the shamans were acting rationally to deal with an inverted otherworld, still rooted in many traditional beliefs, and seen as an impressive natural phenomenon in superior mirages
The trance journeys of shamans, as they were documented in many cultures, are recognized and dealt with here as an early scientific project aimed at dealing with the other, inverted world
The trance state resulting from oxygen deficiency in the brain originally was experienced in the unhealthy upside down position of the body
Summary
In which a spiritually respected individual, by over-exerting body and mind, attempts to reach an altered state of consciousness with the aim to interact with a spirit world for the benefit of his community. As occasionally clearly seen for the observers, the world of the rain snake in the sky was inverted, upside down (sometimes San depicted a giant rain bull, indicating a differently formed superior mirage pattern or narrated of a double “rain snake”, which can be seen during atmospheric inversion conditions, when three images of the horizon are seen). It will be shown below that first trance experiences of shaman may have resulted from really assumed upside down positions experienced when exploring conditions of the inverted other world Because of this credible link to the inverted other world trance experience may have become an important ritual and may have developed to a wide spread shamanic practice as understood today (Eliade, 1964; Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1989). The trance journeys of shamans, as they were documented in many cultures, are recognized and dealt with here as an early scientific project aimed at dealing with the other, inverted world
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