More than one author (including Eliade) has speculated that the story of Odin hanging himself on the “wind-swept tree” for nights all nine is an account of a shamanic experience. Odin also practiced seiðr, a form of magic which some have thought involved visionary, shamanic experiences. (Eliade is suspicious of this claim, however.) Odin, of course, rode an eight-legged steed called Sleipnir. And interestingly Eliade tells us that “the eight-hoofed horse is the shamanic horse par excellence; it is found among the Siberians, as well as elsewhere (e.g., Muria [in India]), always in connection with the shaman’s ecstatic experience.”95
Eliade also discusses the evidence for shamanism among the archaic Greeks. However, the best author to go to for such an account is actually Peter Kingsley, who has written several books interpreting pre-Socratic philosophy as having its origins in mysticism and shamanic experience. Briefly, Kingsley argues that Parmenides (and some other philosophers) may have participated in an initiatory shamanic tradition. The evidence Kingsley presents for this claim (drawn from textual exegesis, history, and archaeology) is surprisingly convincing.
Parmenides’s famous poem, which survives in fragmentary form, is a depiction (so Kingsley claims) of an ancient spiritual trial called “incubation.” This involved lying down in a dark, isolated place, in complete silence and stillness (hesychia). There is a tradition which flourished in Parmenides’s time, which conveyed the “geography” of what one would find in the spiritual world via the practice of incubation. Surviving Greek texts describing incubation state that when one undergoes the experience everything begins spinning and one hears a shrill, piping sound (a sound mentioned in Parmenides’s poem). This was known as the “sound of silence”: the sound behind the entirety of creation.
Kingsley also tells us of the philosopher-poet Epimenides (7th or 6th century B.C.E.). According to legend, he slept for years in a cave and experienced visions of the underworld and of the “abode of Justice and Truth.” “Taken by Apollo” was the Greek expression for those who went on such “vision quests.” In the 1960s a 1st-century C.E. bust of Parmenides was unearthed at Castellammare della Bruca in southern Italy, which bore the inscription “Parmenides, son of Pyres, Ouliadês, Natural Philosopher.” This clearly associates Parmenides with the cult of Apollo Oulios, or Apollo the Healer (Ouliades means “son of Apollo Oulios”). Apollo was known as the “god of lairs,” and of people who lie down in lairs. In other words, of those who undergo “incubation” in order to achieve the status of the iatromantis (“healer-prophet”), a term used to describe Epimenides.96
But even if there was a genuine tradition of shamanism in ancient Europe, how far back does it go? Could it have originated in the Upper Paleolithic, during the time of the cave paintings? If so, it would have appeared more than 30,000 years before the birth of Parmenides. It is certainly possible that European shamanism could be that old, but we can never know for sure. The best thing that can be said about such speculations is that they are probably more reliable than inferences drawn from comparisons between Upper Paleolithic Europeans and recent, non-European hunter-gatherers.
I will have reason to return, very briefly, to the issue of shamanism much later. In the next section, however, we must turn to more fundamental considerations. Lewis-Williams and others claim that the art of Stone Age man became possible due to the development of “fully modern language,” because both require “symbolic thinking.” But this leaves us with the mystery of how the capacity for symbolic thinking came about in the first place. And simply guessing that a “genetic mutation” or “brain restructuring” took place is about as helpful as saying “a miracle occurred.”
My own theory, which I will begin to develop in the following section, argues for a deep tie between art, religion, language, and symbolic thought. All four appear roughly at the same time, in Upper Paleolithic Europe, because all are made possible by something else that the theorists discussed above have failed to consider.
3. ART BEGINS IN WONDER
My thesis, quite simply, is that art, religion, and language are all made possible by a mental or cognitive act which I have called ekstasis.97 To better understand what this consists in, I will ask the reader to consider a simple (or, perhaps, not so simple) question. Have you ever had an experience in which you seemed to become momentarily detached from your mundane concerns, your daily roster of plans and priorities, the cacophony of your internal mental dialogues and daydreams, and even your physical, biological drives, and suddenly—as if your eyes were being opened for the first time—became completely absorbed by an object of some kind or other?98
The “absorption” I mean here is very special. Sometimes we become absorbed in trying to understand—to “figure out”—an object’s function, or its origin, or its possible uses. What I mean instead is a situation where you are simply struck by the sheer Being of the object itself; by the simple fact that it is. This is not, in other words, a situation in which you are analyzing the object, or imagining to what uses it can be put.
I have described ekstasis earlier in this volume as
our capacity to ‘leave ourselves’ (stand outside ourselves: ek-stasis) and the immediate moment, and to be arrested or seized by the Being of things. When this occurs we become the vehicle for Being’s expression, we become inspired, and we are moved to give voice to it and to new possibilities that we glimpse when we are captivated.99
Ekstasis is my interpretation of the Old Norse óðr, of which Odin is the personification. Ekstasis is the source of poetic and artistic inspiration of every kind, religion, myth, philosophy, science, and even language itself.
Ekstasis can be a dramatic, momentous event—or at other times a fleeting one, barely noticed by us. I would venture to say that everyone reading this essay has had the experience of ekstasis. This is because, fundamentally, it is the capacity to experience ekstasis that makes us human. It is not language, or religion, or art, or abstract thought that constitute our humanity—because, as I shall argue, all of these depend upon ekstasis.
What causes or precipitates ekstasis (or an “ecstatic state”)? Some individuals simply seem to be wired for it and regularly have such experiences. Artists are people like this, for reasons that will become clear very soon. There are hardened skeptics who will probably claim that they have never experienced ekstasis, principally because my description of it sounds somewhat like a mystical experience (on this, see below). I will wager, however, that they have indeed had such experiences, but that they were fleeting and quickly forgotten, or dismissed. I have said that ekstasis awakens us to the Being of things—to the simple fact that they are. In the right person, this is experienced as something close to a miracle; in other words it is an occasion for wonder.
Having now given a basic description of ekstasis, let’s look more closely at it and how it works. I have said that it is an experience of the Being of things. Now, this can actually take two forms. In the first, one is struck with wonder at the sheer fact that an individual something or other is. But this experience can easily shade off into wonder that anything at all is. And this is the foundation for the classic mystical experience. From wonder at the sheer fact that this cat is, the mystic proceeds to wonder that anything is at all: in other words, he proceeds from the finite to the infinite; to wonder at the whole.
Here we realize why ekstasis is the foundation for religion. Religion, in fact, begins in “mystical experience.” Typically, it then hardens into dogma divorced from experience, which may even discourage or cripple the openness that made religion possible in the first place. But religion then comes full circle, to a “mystical phase” that renews and enlivens it, at least for some. Thus, mysticism is erroneously thought to be a “later development” in religious traditions—in fact it is there from the beginning, providing the foundational experiences that lead to the religion.
But it is also possible to be struck with wonder not at the individuality of the object, and that it is, but at the fact that this sort o
f thing is.100 I am struck with wonder, for example, at the fact that such a thing as a cat exists at all (which is quite different from feeling wonder at the fact that this individual cat exists). In this state we are captivated by the object’s qualities and how they are “put together”; we become captivated by its form or shape. In other words, in this other form of ekstasis the focus is on the universal that shines through the individual; the individual essentially functions as a stand-in for the universal.
For the present discussion of cave art, and the consciousness of Upper Paleolithic Europeans, it is this second form of ekstasis that interests me the most. For, as I have said, it is in this second form that essence (or the universal) is grasped. This is the key to understanding the emergence of art for, quite simply, I understand representational art to express essences. In other words, a painting of a horse is never simply a painting of this here horse. It is an expression, through this horse, of what it means to be a horse; of “horseness.” This is even the case with portraiture (which our Paleolithic ancestors did not practice). Consider, as probably the best-known example, the Mona Lisa, which everyone agrees is much more than just a skillful representation of someone named Lisa del Giacondo.
As I noted earlier, the cave art exhibits considerable stylization: consider, again, the rhinos of the Chauvet Cave or the impossible antlers of the deer of Lascaux. Stylization always implies grasp of essence. Because stylization just is the omitting of detail to the point where only what is essential remains. In other words, these are not “accurate” portraits of rhinos or deer: these are images that convey the essence of the beasts. In this rhino we find The Rhino; in this deer, The Deer.
In The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer discusses the grasp of the Idea (i.e., the essence or universal) as the basis for representational art.101 What he says is worth quoting and commenting upon at length. Schopenhauer writes:
Raised up by the power of the mind, we relinquish the ordinary way of considering things, and cease to . . . consider the where, the when, the why, and the whither in things, but simply and solely the what. Further, we do not let abstract thought, the concepts of reason, take possession of our consciousness, but, instead of all this, devote the whole power of our mind to perception, sink ourselves completely therein, and let our whole consciousness be filled by the calm contemplation of the natural object actually present, whether it be a landscape, a tree, a rock, a crag, a building, or anything else. We lose ourselves entirely in this object, to use a pregnant expression; in other words, we forget our individuality, our will, and continue to exist only as pure subject, as clear mirror of the object, so that it is as though the object alone existed without anyone to perceive it, and thus we are no longer able to separate the perceiver from the perception, but the two have become one, since the entire consciousness is filled and occupied by a single image of perception.102
Here, Schopenhauer describes something very much like what I have called ekstasis, at least in its second form: the subject is struck with wonder at the Being of the object and becomes absorbed in contemplation of what it is. He continues:
If, therefore, the object has to such an extent passed out of all relation to something outside it, and the subject has passed out of all relation to the will, what is thus known is no longer the individual thing as such, but the Idea, the eternal form . . . Now in such contemplation, the particular thing at one stroke becomes the Idea of its species, and the perceiving individual becomes the pure subject of knowing. The individual, as such, knows only particular things; the pure subject of knowledge knows only Ideas. . . . The knowing individual as such and the particular thing known by him are always in a particular place, at a particular time, and are links in the chain of causes and effects. The pure subject of knowledge and its correlative, the Idea, have passed out of all these [forms]. Time, place, the individual that knows, and the individual that is known, have no meaning for them.103
In the contemplation of the object, the Idea or universal shines forth. The individual, as I have said, essentially becomes a stand-in for the universal: Schopenhauer says that “at one stroke” the object “becomes the Idea of its species.” Phenomenologically, this is entirely accurate: in this special change in focus, the subject sees the object as its (the object’s) universal: it sees this horse, for example, just as The Horse. A little later I will discuss how the subject perceives himself in this process—what Schopenhauer means in referring to how the perceiving individual becomes “the pure subject of knowledge.” This will provide us with an important clue as to the significance of why men are continually portrayed in the cave art as stick-figures devoid of character.
Next Schopenhauer asks what kind of “knowledge” is it that occupies itself with “the Ideas.” And he answers:
It is art, the work of genius. It repeats the eternal Ideas apprehended through pure contemplation, the essential and abiding element in all the phenomena of the world. According to the material in which it repeats, it is sculpture, painting, poetry, or music. Its only source is knowledge of the Ideas; its sole aim is communication of this knowledge. Whilst science, following the restless and unstable stream of the fourfold forms of reasons or grounds and consequents, is with every end it attains again and again directed farther, and can never find an ultimate goal or complete satisfaction, any more than by running we can reach the point where the clouds touch the horizon; art, on the contrary, is everywhere at its goal. For it plucks the object of its contemplation from the stream of the world’s course, and holds it isolated before it. This particular thing, which in that stream was an infinitesimal part, becomes for art a representative of the whole, an equivalent of the infinitely many in space and time. It therefore pauses at this particular thing; it stops the wheel of time; for it the relations vanish; its object is only the essential, the Idea.104
Quite simply, Schopenhauer means that art (specifically representational art) occupies itself with essences, with the universal. As I have said, a painting of Seabiscuit never conveys just Seabiscuit alone; through the image, The Horse shines through. The artist sees this when he sees the object; when he turns to the task of creating his artwork, his aim is for you to see this as well.
What we find in the art of the European caves, then, is the record of an event: the first appearance of ekstasis in the lives of men, some 40,000 years ago. Really, what we have here is the first appearance of men. For, as I have argued, it is ekstasis that makes us truly human, and founds the possibility of art—and also (as we shall see) religion, philosophy, and science. Why did men paint in the caves of France and Spain? Why did they paint stylized images of horses, bison, aurochs, deer, and lions? Because for the first time they awakened, and were struck with wonder at the sheer fact that such things are. Again, the images do not usually seem to be telling a story. Instead, they seem to have been painted purely for their own sake—simply because these animals are beautiful and fascinating. And the sole “purpose” that seems to have been involved was the purpose of art itself: to convey the essence of things (the “Idea,” as Schopenhauer would put it). To paint The Horse, The Bison, The Aurochs, etc.
One of the sillier parts of Lewis-Williams’s “shamanism” theory has him claiming that because the cave painters did not set their animal images in any kind of painted landscape they are mysteriously “floating in space.” This is evidence, he thinks, that the painters saw the images in shamanistic “hallucinations.” He also thinks this is the only explanation for the sometimes exaggerated stylization of the images. (One wonders if he thinks Picasso had to have been hallucinating.) But a much simpler explanation is that in the paintings, the animals are being entirely separated from their background so that they and they alone become our objects. This is what we would expect if this art flowed, as I have argued, from the experience of ekstasis.
The artists were arrested by the Being of these animals, and (as Schopenhauer puts it) “lost themselves” in the contemplation of them, detached from the moment, and
from the animals’ surroundings. Like artists throughout the ages, they wished to replicate this experience in their paintings—for themselves, and anyone else who might see them.
4. “TO BE HUMAN MEANS TO BE A SAYER”
Of course, it is quite obvious that the ability to perceive essences (“Ideas,” as Schopenhauer puts it) plays a role in other human activities, besides art. Schopenhauer’s discussion of the Ideas is overtly Platonic, and philosophy, another defining activity of mankind, certainly occupies itself with the universal. But, contra Schopenhauer, so too does science. How many scientists have been born in the moment when, as a child, someone experienced wonder in the fact that such a thing as X is—and wanted to investigate further? The aim of science is to know the natures, the essences, of things, and to know the universals (the laws) that explain all.
And while we moderns tend to see science and religion as antipodes, religion begins in the same wonder. In my essay “Summoning the Gods,” I wrote: “our wonder at the being of particular things is an intuition of a god, or divine being.”105 Religion too seeks the universal and the eternal—which we only experience in the ecstatic moment when, as Schopenhauer puts it, we “cease to consider the where, the when, the why, and the whither in things, but simply and solely the what.” When, in other words, we momentarily abandon all preoccupation with the changing particulars of the world, and focus our minds on that which does not change: the universal. It is the ecstatic experience of Being as such—wonder in the sheer fact that anything is at all—that makes possible the mysticism that is the alpha and omega of religion.
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