Thread: Animism and Dreams

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

I am not sure of the animistic/shaman values, potentially,
- Intuition
- Communication with spiritual realm
- Coming of age
These values or others come from the need for shamans to generally play a social role, I believe. I'd like to hear what other values I might of missed or values that both groups are lacking?

I'd say that the role of shaman (or medicine man, spiritual specialist or whatever) in the primitive community is double: (1) to help the individuals (heal them, give them more power), and (2) to strengthen their identity as a whole by (re)creating the shared mythical background, or as you say shortly, the social part. At those times (and we are talking about the time span of 200 thousand years of human history at least), spirituality was indistinguishable from science and everyone was a shaman to some extent. Everyone used to have direct source of spirituality in their mind, in their visions and dreams, and in their powers as well, whatever they be. There are many specific virtues (real or alleged) for which a shaman could have been valued by the particular community - be it his or her ability to heal, know/make medicine, kill an enemy at distance, have precognition (in dreams, visions or signs), tell myths, strengthen the common code of ethics, interpret dreams and signs, guide a soul to the afterworld, dance, or sing...
What unifies the communities of "animists" and "lucid dreamers" is, obviously, great emphasis on dreams, on their clarity, memory, and control(?). Imho the shamanic concern for dreams is generally more spiritual, but also more pragmatical. They really strove to make contact with the spiritual entities and realms, and they needed it in order to profit from it, more or less directly, in their waking life. (It doesn't mean that they didn't enjoy dreaming though. I believe that spirituality is in fact deeply linked with pleasure.) That's what I find amusing on the animistic spirituality - it's brutally pragmatical and goal-oriented