Customer Reviews

Soul of Shamanism

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The Soul of Shamanism is an academic, postmodern examination of New Age attempts at shamanism, in which Noel proposes some alternative paths for the Euro-American seeker. Noel has an interesting style: he "speaks" to the reader in the first person, as though he is telling a story, and yet, much of the book is a review of literature. Noel has written a previous unpublished treatise on Castaneda, and several chapters deal with the Castaneda hoax, as well as the neo-shamanistic workshops of anthropologist Michael Harner. To say the least, Noel is not impressed.

Alternatives are proposed, in particular, from the perspective of James Hillman and Carl Jung. The most interesting chapters at the center of the book deal with dreams and imaginings. He touches briefly on the Merlin myth, arguing that instead of appropriating models of shamanism from other cultures, which he sees as colonialist, Euro-Americans should turn to models from their own culture. Yet not enough is said about Merlin.

One drawback is that this book is addressed to the Euro-American reader. It will not meet the expectations of a reader from another ethic group and is sure to disappoint if not anger. Additionally, the book is dense and academic. Despite my Ph.D. in anthropology and a sympathetic worldview, I found it tedious reading and would not assign it to students. This is not a handbook. Rather, it is a critical reading of the literature and experience of neoshamanism from a postmodern perspective.

I was at first excited to read this book for an objective, comprehensive overview to understanding how some shamanic practices might relate to our modern Western culture. And, at first, Noel seems to deliver, reviewing briefly the writings of first Eliade, and later, Castanada, observing the phenomenon of the latter's widespread influence and the fervor generated by his accounts of mystical encounters. (In fact, Noel's account mentions numerous writings by various authors on soulful topics, and for these references his book is rather valuable.) But by the time I reached the middle of the book, I was already feeling disgruntled by how many pages were devoted to circlularly discussing "fictive power." My disgruntlement turned to suspicion as I entered the second half of the book (which introduces the reader to various post-Jungian philosophers), for here I was, reading a glowing account of Thomas Moore, the same individual whose critical acclaim of the book is printed on the book jacket("Before reading anything else . . . read this book")! Talk about Circular! In fact, all three personal reviews included on the book jacket were written by individuals whose teachings are positively reviewed by Noel in the book itself. So, rather than opening doors to new understanding and broader possibilities, I feel as though the book has tried to lead me into someone else's camp or cloister, one that seems very concerned with self-protection. Is it really from such a position that we should be exploring soulfulness and spirituality?!

The book is a serious attempt to strengthen the connection between imaginal psychology and shamanism. But if we wish to strengthen the practice of what Noel calls an "authentic western shamanism," he leads us in exactly the opposite direction from which we should go. It is presumptuous of Noel to suggest that Merlin should be some kind of spiritual figure for us. He has missed the whole point of universal, organic shamanism. He claims to teach it. More likely he teaches about it. The best point in the book is Noel's thought that we must stop fantasizing about native shamans.

The Soul of Shamanism, by the late Dr. Daniel C. Noel, is a stand-alone monograph operating on the thesis that Western society has a true path to shamanic knowledge and power through Jungian imaginal psychology, and that this is imminently preferable to an uneasy adoption of indigenous wisdom. Noel's arguments are convincing, although occasionally difficult to follow; he uses an inter-disciplinary approach that draws from anthropology, literary criticism, Jungian psychology and folk culture. The volume is intended for scholars, storytellers and spiritual seekers, according to Noel; I would add that mental health therapists would also benefit from The Soul of Shamanism.

Dr. Noel's scholarship was in the fields of religion and literature; he was Visiting Professor of Liberal Studies in Religion and Culture, Vermont College of Norwich University, at the time of his death. He was also an Adjunct Faculty Member in Mythological Studies at the Pacifica Graduate Institute (Carpinteria, CA).

Noel's book appears to have been the culmination of his life's work, fundamentally based on an appreciation of the creative, rich role that the human soul occupies in life. His goal is to re-vivify our Western souls through shamanic methods, in an honest fashion that is founded in our own culture and that does not steal from other cultures in any way; to (re)create a genuinely Western shamanism.

Noel begins with an important insight: current Western shamanism (neoshamanism) is based upon the printed word, similar to the way some indigenous shamanisms may be based upon the drum. Noel perceives that literature - fiction, in particular - opens the same doorway to alternate states of consciousness in the Western mind that drumming may open to a person of an indigenous culture. He considers this to be "fictive power" and that it is virtually the sole socially-sanctioned method which allows our Western imaginations to function. The rest of our attention grasps for scientific, literal truth in every arena of our lives, even in religion (i.e: Jehovah's Witnesses).

Fictive power, then, provides Western minds with the possibilities of other states of consciousness. As in the case of "shamanthropologists" Carlos Castaneda or Michael Harner, or "shamanovelists" Mario Vargas Llosa or Ronald Sukenick, it can draw us away from a stifling literalism into consideration of the unknown, and into a consideration of our own capacities in the face of that unknown. We may also encounter the Other in a way that our literal strivings cannot allow us to conceive. Noel contends that Westerners must most urgently encounter the Other that is our own soul, whose absence or illness can be seen in the very ugliness of the society we create.

This urgency comes from Noel's perception that modern Western culture, particularly that of the United States, is suffering from soul loss. Since this is an illness recognized through shamanism, Noel's position is that a particular shamanic practice is the best method for curing the ailment: soul retrieval. While he perceives that the shamanic wisdom of other cultures is very attractive to us, and that we learn to believe in the potential of shamanic practices through books about other cultures, it is only a shamanism based authentically in Western culture that will exactly meet the need for the retrieval of the Western soul.

It is to Dr. Carl Jung's psychological insights that Noel turns for the roots of a genuinely Western shamanism. Jung, posits Noel, reached deeply into himself following his schism with Freud and engaged in the same level of consciousness that a shaman does while shamanizing. The importance and value of dreams to Jungian psychology, and the post-Jungian developments characterized by James Hillman's work, are the elements of Western knowledge that are, according to Dr. Noel, our culture's shamanic practice. In particular, allowing the dream to inform the everyday ego-consciousness is a crucial step in regaining the health of our souls. By giving priority to the dream we are receiving messages from our souls, thereby opening communication with them and healing the schism. This is radically opposite to the Freudian analysis of dreams that puts the soul's communication in service to the more limited ego-consciousness. Noel refers to the practice as imaginal psychology (Hillman's term) or imaginal shamanism.

I found Noel's The Soul of Shamanism to explore a powerful idea: that of an authentic modern Western shamanic practice. There is no reason to accept a belief that modern Western culture is inherently unable to operate shamanically, and every reason to assume the responsibility for our own health on every level, rather than exploiting the spiritual practices of indigenous cultures that are not adequate to heal our ailment precisely anyway. While I was reading the book, I found myself deeply excited about the reasoned proposal Noel was making and seeing many personal possibilities in it. I find myself increasingly reluctant to heal the psychic wounds I have received in this culture by using the methods of people whom we (culturally) are oppressing. This ideas presented by Noel have great potential, on personal and social levels, to bring Westerners back into balance, psychologically and spiritually.

I agree with Noel's proposition that fiction functions to bring Western minds into alternate states of consciousness, as with his perception that the mainstream aspect of our culture does not provide a legitimate place for the qualities of soul that deepen human experience. I had not previously encountered such a detailed assessment of Jungian psychology and I found myself fascinated with it, as well as impressed with Noel's conclusions and insights. The material is presented in a scholarly fashion, with ample evidence supporting each step of Noel's argument.

I found myself disappointed that Noel did not address the spirits that shamans contact and work with; his approach is largely focussed on an internalized, individual experience. This, however, may be a result of the Western cultural emphasis that Noel obviously couldn't escape.

On the whole, I think that The Soul of Shamanism succeeds in what it sets out to do, despite occasional obfuscating prose. I am so personally excited by the thoughts Noel presented that I intend to purchase a copy; I shall purchase a hardcover copy, as the paperback cover is lurid and distracting.

The late Daniel C. Noel was a colleague of mine in the Mythology Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute near Santa Barbara, CA. As faculty members, we were kept busy preparing eight hour classes and guiding as many as 15-20 doctoral advisees at a time, which means there was rarely time to keep abreast of each other's work. Thus, although I knew Dan had recently published a book on shamanism, I had no idea of its content.

On Friday, 23 August 2002, I was in the middle of interviewing perspective students for the autumn quarter when a staff member interrupted to say that Dan had died suddenly. I was stunned. I just stared in disbelief as tears started running down my face. I knew Dan as a shy, witty, incisive, engagingly quirky man. We had been allies at crucial times in faculty meetings. I had long looked forward to enjoying lengthy conversations with him in some vague future when we would both have more time. But now that future had vanished, "disappearing" Dan along with it. I couldn't stop crying. I delayed the next interview and slowly managed to pull myself together. Then somehow I continued with the rest of the day's appointments.

Afterwards, I went to our campus bookstore and bought Dan's shamanism book. I opened it at random, consciously using it as an oracle, and found myself on p. 117 reading about Jung, art, Merlin's Cry, and the end of Jung's life. I knew Dan well enough to realize that I was also reading about the end of Dan's life:

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...If "modern man," as he [Jung] wrote, was in search of soul, this modern man, a Merlin of sorts, had rediscovered it, if only by recognizing it when he fell into it in a shamanic descent. Jung himself survived his ordeal with the objective psyche to share the healing wisdom with us, but he feared at the end of his life that the psychology he fashioned to do so went unheeded, uncomprehended, like Merlin's cry in the fairy forest. There may have been some petulance in his worry, a bit of bruised ego that wanted wider acceptance for its views. But who can say that postmodern persons are any less bereft of soul than modern men? Jung's Merlin cry does deserve our greater attentiveness.

Just as Jung realized his personal daimons in art, so his psychological legacy must be realized by successors whose words are never far from the arts of imagination, which are Merlin's bardic media today and the channels of our attunement. It is such post-Jungian successors who make Jung's rediscovery, his attentiveness, our resource in the search for an imaginal shamanism....
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I hadn't known that Dan saw Merlin as the West's key shamanic guide. But after reading that passage, I understood that it was Merlin I should invoke, asking that he accompany Dan on this unexpectedly "expected" journey.

In the years following, I have sometimes skimmed a few pages in the book but it still triggered too much pain to read at any length. Only when I began expanding my Myth*ing Links' Shamanism page a few days ago did I finally return to it. I first read the current six reviews on amazon.com and was surprised by how drastically opposed they were. One found the book worthless; several complained about its academic dryness; yet still others loved it and found it deeply moving. The sincerity of one comment in particular struck me: the writer said he felt uncomfortable following shamanic traditions from non-white cultures because of the West's on-going and brutal oppression of such indigenous cultures -- thus, he greatly appreciated Dan's focus on the West's own Merlin. On the one hand, I resonate with that perspective and suspect Dan would have appreciated it. But as someone who has guided people of all races through pastlife regressions for nearly forty years, I find only a limited value in that viewpoint -- all of us, regardless of the color of our current skins, have lived in countless indigenous cultures. Whether one wishes to use a reincarnational framework or Jung's Collective Unconscious, humanity "owns" the shamanic realm as its birthright. Details, portals, means, and levels of access differ, of course, depending upon cultural and environmental constraints, but if one gravitates to a particular tradition, it is likely that this isn't the first time one has done so.

After reading and pondering the six reviews on amazon, last night (9-10 September 2009) I spent the wee hours reading at random in Dan's book, just following my nose from one of my interests to the next. His basic argument is that our postmodern, non-tribal pathway to shamanic insight now comes through dreams, art, and the other precious gifts flowing from our imaginations. Because of this, he writes frequent, often soaring, paeans to imagination. Further, he sees in the "fictive power" of literature -- e.g., Carlos Castaneda's "fairy tales" -- a valid and significant shamanic catalyst (Dan's description of his experiences with Castaneda is especially compelling: as his colleagues and students were well aware, they left him with a lasting wound).

This is a very personal book. Dan actually knew many of the authors whose work he analyzes so he brings an intriguing autobiographical component to his writing. This is a book that wants to be read "imaginatively" -- not straight through, in other words, but a chapter here, another there, as one feels an impulse to explore a particular theme, author, or idea.

As one who deeply values the mystical, numinous, and shamanic in what I write and what I read, and as a lover of others who do the same, I am naturally drawn to Dan's argument in favor of the arts as the West's path and portal to shamanism. I'm not willing to go as far as Dan, however. As I see it, there is an inevitable difference between what writers and painters do and what a Pablo Amaringo or Jeremy Narby experience. Writing a brilliant, evocative novel about a ballet dancer, for example, cannot really be compared with actually *being* a Nijinsky, Nureyev, or Baryshnikov. To push it still further, even being one of those astonishing dancers would not be enough. Agnes de Mille understood this better than most when she wrote in *Dance to the Piper* (p.171):

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Let us try to do a pueblo corn dance and see how far we get. Most ballet dancers think they can. It demands no muscles they haven't got. But the Indians can make the rains come.
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Only a few have that gift, of course. Even among indigenous peoples, shamans are the exceptions. For the rest of us, what Dan lays out so skillfully, from such a wide variety of perspectives and endlessly rich examples, is of great value in luring us more deeply into the nurturing, demanding realms of "an imaginal shamanism."

Surprised by the negative reviews of this book, I thought I'd add my own, more positive comments. Although I read the book some years ago, I remember it as readable and important.

Noel's insight involves the power of fiction in imaginal initiation. Most of us don't have access to traditional shamanistic culture. We can sign on for an expensive trip to the Amazon, or start taking workshops, but what's likely to first inspire us is books. Noel makes a convincing argument, I think, that the act of reading particular texts is not only preparation: the reading experience fully entered is an initiation into imaginal realities. Thus the importance of Castaneda's (and others') fiction. Visionary fiction draws our attention to the imaginal and structures imaginal experience.

This isn't the book you want if you're looking for exercises or directions. But it's worth reading if you're interested in the imagination, the imaginal, and the neo-shamanism being generating based not only on indigenous training but on a reinterpretation and reimagination of shamanism as it is transmitted through anthropological narratives and fictions.

After trudging through 122 pages of this book I finally tossed it. Page after page the author keeps making the same point- OK, ALREADY, MAYBE CASTENEDA'S WORK WAS FICTION- IS THERE A POINT TO ALL THIS? AND IF SO- WILL YOU PLEASE MAKE IT AND MOVE ON? I kept hanging in there hoping he would make a point somewhere along the line, but finally realized that this book was not going anywhere! I was only slightly amused at the author's presumptuous criticism of Mircea Eliade's treatise on shamanism. At least Eliade had something to say. This book is as dry as a bone, and as far as I read has little or no "soul." Why in the world Deloria recommends this blah blah blah is beyond me!