The Spiritual Nature of Animals. Karlene Stange
is never visible. . . . While he is one god, he is four individuals. . . . The word Wakan-Tanka means all the wakan beings because they are all as if one.”15
Every part of the one is connected in the dimension of the sacred, and each animal characteristic symbolizes the powers it demonstrates. The buffalo is chief of all animals. She represents the feminine, creating earth, which gives rise to all that is. The bear is knowledge, especially of herbs and roots. The moth is the wind contained by the cocoon.
Prior to the arrival of Europeans in North America, the Sioux did not have a sentimental or romantic attitude about animals. Nor did they view them materialistically. They hunted game for survival, and they viewed the hunt as a religious activity that required ritual preparation. The game was a sacred, power-bearing being. They referred to an animal as a spirit. For many Plains tribes, each animal was a crystallized projection of the abstract spirit. One man called Bear with White Paws said, “The bear has a soul like ours, and his soul talks to mine and tells me what to do.”16
Other important aspects of the Great Spirit are embodied in spiders and birds. The spider (Iktomi) holds a special place for the Oglala. He can fly through the air on a strand of web, he can glide across the water, and he can walk on eight legs.17 Since birds are two-legged and can fly, they are considered to be supreme — the most important of all the creatures. To interact with an animal is to communicate with that aspect of the unifying spirit. Black Elk related that “one should pay attention to even the smallest crawling creatures, for these too may have a valuable lesson to teach us, and even the smallest ant may wish to communicate to a man.”18
When an Oglala has a vision or a dream of an animal, that animal becomes significant in a religious sense for the individual; that animal may be a spirit guide. A vision may come during a time of illness, or one may quest for a vision. The ritual vision quest may involve fasting, walking long distances, and participating in the sweat lodge.
Joseph Epes Brown wrote, “It is through the vision quest, participated in with physical sacrifice and the utmost humility, that the individual opens himself in the most direct manner to contact with the spiritual essences underlying the forms of the manifested world. It is in the states achieved at this level that meditation may be surpassed by contemplation. Black Elk has thus said that the greatest power above all in the retreat is contact with silence.‘. . . For is not silence the very voice of the Great Spirit?’ ”19
A vision of an animal spirit guide may come, or people may turn into animals, and animals may turn into people, other animals, or even plants, such as a sacred medicinal plant. The animal spirit guides may provide the human with special powers. For example, the medicine man or woman may learn the uses of medicinal herbs from the bear spirit.
The medicine man or woman who becomes a healer knows that it is not the person who works the cure, nor is it the animal or the medicinal plant. According to Brown, “These are simply the phenomenal channeling intermediaries through which the intangible spirit-power operates. Black Elk made it clear that the power does not come from him, but from the Power above, which is the source of all powers.”20
Each class of animal has a guardian divinity that is the mother archetype, which may appear as a phenomenal animal. The spiritual or immaterial quality of an animal is the important thing. As there is no clear line between the worlds of animals, spirits, and people, outward forms shift. Thus, the Nagiya, or immaterial self, of a bear may possess a person when that person wants to have the nature of a bear.
For hunter-gatherer societies in general, animals are powerful, immortal spirits. The soul or life of the animal is contained in the bones, especially the skull. It is from these bones that the lord of that wild beast causes new flesh to grow. So the hunter has reverence for the beasts. He kills the animal that is provided for him by the guardian spirit, as agreed between that spirit and the shaman. The hunter kills only what is needed and never wastes food.
The Tungusic and Buryat Tribes
The word shaman is Russian, and it derives from the Tungusic language, which is shared by several indigenous tribes in Siberia and Central Asia, and their religious practices. However, the shaman is not a priest. Much of the tribe’s religious life goes on without him or her. The shaman functions as a healer by entering into a trance during which the soul leaves the body to travel to the spirit worlds. The shaman allows healing by capturing the patient’s missing soul and returning it to occupy the body. The shaman also accompanies the souls of the dead to the otherworld. The mystical journey is perilous, but he or she is aided by spirit guides and sanctioned by the initiation experience.
Animal sacrifice occurs in the history of all the major religions and is discussed in detail in the next chapter. Siberian shamans participate in the sacrificial ritual for the purpose of healing. Remember, the shaman retains a paradisal, nondual mentality, an understanding that there is no death, only transformation. The shaman is the master transformer who can shape-shift, like the Australian Aboriginal creators, and guide others, including the sacrificial animal, to spirit realm for the purpose of healing. The physical world is just an illusion we made up with our concept of dualism. The tribal shaman travels between both worlds, guiding the sacrificed animal on the journey. He or she participates in the sacrificial ritual but is not involved in the actual killing of the beast. Rather, the shaman is only concerned with the mystical itinerary of the sacrificed animal. The shaman conducts the soul of a sacrificed animal to the celestial Supreme God.
Mircea Eliade explains the shaman’s powers: “He foresees changes in the atmosphere, enjoys clairvoyance and vision at a distance (hence he can find game); in addition, he has closer relations, of a magico-religious nature, with animals.”21 The Buryat peoples, who are distinct but related to the Tungusic, tell a story that illustrates this.
In the beginning, there were only the gods (tengri) in the west and evil spirits in the east. The gods created man, and he lived happily until the time when the evil spirits spread sickness and death over the earth. The gods decided to give mankind a shaman to combat disease and death, and they sent an eagle. But men did not understand its language; besides, they had no confidence in a mere bird. The eagle returned to the gods and asked them to give him the gift of speech, or else to send a Buryat shaman to men. The gods sent him back with an order to grant the gift of shamanizing to the first person he should meet on earth. Returned to earth, the eagle saw a woman asleep under a tree, and had intercourse with her. Sometime later the woman gave birth to a son, who became the first shaman.22
The father of the first shaman is therefore the eagle; the eagle is the shamanic symbol of the Supreme Being, and they have the same name — Ai Toyon — the creator of light. Legends state that each shaman has a bird-of-prey mother. A Yakut legend states that shamans are born in a giant fir tree in the north. In it, a bird-of-prey mother, with the head of an eagle and iron feathers, lays eggs that hatch into shamans.
The first shamans were “white,” created by the gods, and they wear white costumes.23 The color refers to the types of spirits the shaman is assigned to. The white shaman participates in the horse sacrifice ceremony, where a horse is blessed, then sacrificed, and the shaman takes the horse’s soul through the heavens directly to the Supreme Creator to whom the shaman prays. If the sacrifice is accepted, the shaman receives predictions concerning the weather and harvest. He or she also learns of what other sacrifices are expected.
The “black” shamans are a more recent creation and wear a blue costume. The term black does not indicate evil but signifies the class of shaman. The black shaman may travel to the underworld, where a dog guards the entrance to the realm of the dead. Going to retrieve the souls of sick people, he or she must cross a dangerous bridge that the soul of a sinner cannot cross. The shaman passes the place where sinners are being tortured and succeeds in entering, despite the dog. The shaman may be there to retrieve the soul of a sick child, for which a costly sacrifice may be required. The soul of another consenting victim may be given. In that case, the shaman turns into an eagle, descends on the victim, and tears out the person’s soul. On the return from the underworld, the shaman may come back riding a goose.