The Acid Diaries (Christopher Gray) / quote 45 of 125
Eliade's shamans
The next book I set about reading was Mircea Eliade’s Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, which proved to be an inspired choice. Mircea Eliade’s groundbreaking research had been published only a few years before the Wassons’, and in many respects their books dovetailed. Like the Wassons, Eliade believed that the primitive, virtually archaic tribal societies stretching in an arc from Scandinavia to Indonesia all evidenced traces of a vast pre-Christian religion. But whereas the Wassons thought they had discovered the sacraments at the heart of such a religion, Eliade believed he had identified its priesthood. For the spiritual life of all the tribes Eliade studied revolved around a single maverick figure—at once doctor, magician, and poet—for whom Eliade used the Siberian term shaman. Anything further from the Christian priest would be hard to imagine. At best chronic misfits, at worst shamans appeared downright insane. They could be either men or women; in fact, they were often sexually ambivalent and cross-dressed. Shamans were neither hereditary nor elected, but were individuals who assumed the role on their own initiative. Their right to do so came from having survived a mental breakdown or life-threatening illness (frequently epilepsy) during their childhood or adolescence.