by Lionel
When Erickson’s ideas about the subconscious are held up against the Obeah concepts of Orishas and saints as entities that solve worshippers’ problems, a number of significant similarities begin to appear.
The Milton model in NLP can be regarded as a special way of using language to help to produce and maintain a sufficient level of trance to enable the conscious, subconscious, and superconscious minds to communicate effectively with one another. There were three aspects of the Milton model. First, the language used helped to build and maintain a trancelike condition that opened portals between the different minds. Second, the language was intended to distract and occupy the conscious mind so that the subconscious could communicate more effectively. The third aspect was the most intriguing of the three: the special language used in the Milton model was packed with meaningful stories, parallel ideas, analogies, and metaphors through which Erickson’s therapeutic suggestions could be expressed.
The mysterious syncretistic religions — Obeah, Voodoo, Candomblé, and the others — are all rich in allegories, fables, metaphors, and similes. At many ceremonies, the high priest or high priestess will teach the worshippers in this way. While waiting for the ceremony to begin, worshippers will often regale one another with ancient African myths and legends or with stories of the sufferings and deaths of the Christian saints and martyrs whom they identify with their Orishas.
Some of these fables and allegories refer to fireflies, or nimitas as they are known in the Dominican Republic. They are said to be the souls of the dead shining their lights to watch and guard the loved ones they have left behind on Earth.
The tortoise of a thousand tricks.
Another of these stories with a meaning comes from an ancient Yoruba tradition. A certain African king had a daughter named Bola who was unable to speak. A cunning tortoise — a paranormal entity that was known as the tortoise of a thousand tricks — went to the king and offered to heal the girl. The king promised to give the tortoise half of his house if he could cure Bola of her muteness. The tortoise accepted the king’s offer and found Bola asleep beside a large bush outside the village. He placed a container of honey nearby without her seeing him and then concealed himself where he could watch her. Bola awoke, looked around, and saw the honey. She put her hand on the container and the tortoise shouted, “Bola has stolen my honey!”
“I haven’t stolen it!” cried Bola — speaking for the first time in her life.
The tortoise tied her wrists and led her back to the village singing, “Bola is a shameless thief.” Bola protested her innocence and sang her denials in response to the tortoise’s accusations.
When they reached the village, the king and the villagers rejoiced that she could now speak and the grateful king rewarded the cunning tortoise with half of the royal house. Underneath that simple story are some deep and interesting concepts concerning the nature of psychosomatic illnesses and inabilities — and the tortoise’s use of shock therapy.
African girl who might be Bola.
Another teaching legend concerns the Ciguapa, which has the appearance of an exquisitely beautiful dark-eyed girl but is cruel, deceitful, and dangerous. Her shining black hair reaches to her ankles and is her only clothing. Victims of her fatal beauty follow her into deep, dark forests and are never seen again. In some versions of her legend, the Ciguapa is the personification of Death — a more attractive one than is the old man with the scythe. Another part of her legend warns prospective victims that if they stand by the shore and call out for her a huge wave will rise and draw them out to sea.
Yet another cautionary legend from the Dominican Republic refers to Los Indios de las Augas, which translates as “The Water Indians.” These strange beings — if they are anything more than myth or legend — might even be connected with the old traditions of Atlantis. They are believed to live in deep caves, near rivers and lakes, and on the coast. As with the Ciguapa, their women are exquisitely beautiful and are said to come out of their caves at night looking for men. A man who accompanies a Water Indian girl back to her cave, however, is never seen again.
In other versions of the legend, the Water Indians are kind and generous people who are powerful magicians and healers. They generously help human beings and teach people about therapeutic herbs.
Another strange story — a very popular mystery with those who live near it — is a hill that appears to defy gravity. It is situated on the Cabral-Polo road between Auyamas and Polo in the Dominican Republic. The hill in question is known as La Cueva, meaning “The Cave.” Witnesses report that cars left out of gear appear to run up the hill, and a football or cylindrical tin will also appear to roll upwards against gravity. This provides exactly the kind of story-with-a-meaning that leaders of the syncretized mystery religions can employ — all types of metaphors and allegories can be drawn from it. It would have had special appeal to runaway slaves and others who chose to go against what society expected of them. Watching and waiting beside the road as object after object appears to defy gravity also has trance-inducing properties — of the type used in religious services for millennia.
Egyptologists who have made specialized studies of trance practices in ancient Egyptian religion and therapy refer to “therapeutic dreaming.” Patients could visit some of the ancient Egyptian temples, where, in a separate area, the priestly hypnotherapist would induce a trance by lighting an oil lamp to aid the patient’s concentration. This would be accompanied by quiet, gentle, repetitive droning chants.
Other Egyptologists examine the mysterious and all-embracing concept of Neter in this context. Neter can be interpreted to mean the Supreme Creative Power, very similar to the idea of the One Supreme God at the head of Voodoo, Obeah, Candomblé, and Santeria. Other Egyptologists suggest that the word Neter carries the sense of continuous renewal, renovation, and re-creation rather than a once-and-forever process. This aspect of Neter makes the One Supreme God the sustainer of the cosmos as well as its creator. Other linguistic scholars regard Neter as referring to that which is divine, holy, and separate from creation. Some translators link it with the full and original meaning of the Latin natura, which personifies the entire natural existence and function of the universe as a totality — cosmic creation followed by rhythmic renewal.
In other versions of this ancient Egyptian therapeutic trance ceremony, the seeker went into the dream chamber alone, carrying the hypnotic lamp. Herbs and spices were burned and the enquirer gazed at the flame and inhaled the aromatic fragrances until the trance state was achieved. The Neter was then said to appear and the enquirer would lie down and continue drifting deeper and deeper into a strange, trancelike sleep. The Neter’s purpose was to provide healing and give messages to the self-hypnotized sleeper.
Just as the word Neter could refer to the One Supreme Creator-Sustainer of the universe, so the term Neteru referred to the lesser gods of ancient Egypt whose statues filled the various temples. The Neteru can, therefore, be considered the ancient Egyptian equivalent of the Orishas.
Amenhotep III, who was the ninth pharaoh of Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty, succeeded his father, Thutmose IV, during the fourteenth century BC.
A number of researchers into these ancient Egyptian mysteries have reached the conclusion that where accounts exist of Neteru statues apparently coming to life while their worshippers sat staring at them in their half-lit temples, the worshippers had slipped into trance states in which the statues appeared to them to become animated.
Something very similar seems to have occurred in the ancient temples of Tarxien on Malta. Researchers believe that there were dream chambers within these prehistoric temples in which aromatic herbs were burned to encourage the trance process.
These temple complexes at Tarxien have been described as the cathedrals of Stone Age culture — and it is not difficult to access Malta from Egypt or other parts of North Africa. Dream chambers in ancient Egypt could have been inspired by the dream chambers of Tarxien, or vice versa. Alternatively, both could have
come from a third more ancient and more technically advanced civilization with its roots far to the west beyond Gibraltar.
In 1915, Sir Temi Zammit, an outstanding Maltese archaeologist, began work on the Tarxien temples after their accidental discovery by stonemasons the previous year. (If these craftsmen were members of one of the ancient Masonic Orders — as seems likely — their discovery may not have been entirely accidental.) Following Zammit’s expert work, the partial remains of a large statue of the Earth Mother goddess revealed that this temple complex was dedicated to her and that the majority — if not all — of her worshippers here would probably have been women and girls. This Maltese goddess could be the Tarxien counterpart of the Orisha Yemaja, or perhaps of Oshun, Orisha of love and fertility. She is also understood to be a patron of art, and the Tarxien temple complex is very beautifully decorated with scrolls and spiral patterns.
Statues of a bull — representing masculine strength and potency — and a sow with her piglets — representing fertility — are also prominent in the Tarxien temple complex. The bull might possibly represent the Orisha Shango, a potent male god of thunder.
The sounds of religious liturgies can also become trance-inducing. Just as focusing on a small light source — such as a lamp or candle flame — can influence those areas of the brain that deal with visual stimuli via the optic nerve, so those areas of the brain that process sound stimuli can respond to certain pitches, volumes, and persistent repetitions. In broad terms, concentration on a single light source, especially one that is moving rhythmically, has the effect of encouraging trance. In much the same way, concentration on a prolonged sound, especially one that is rising and falling rhythmically, has the effect of encouraging trance. When carefully analyzed, most religious liturgies have this quality. The liturgical chanting used in Voodoo, Obeah, Santeria, Candomblé, and similar religions is particularly trance-inducing. Their rituals also involve repetitive rhythmic movements aligned with the chanting and these movements also encourage the trance state. When aimed in the same direction, light, sound, and movement act effectively together to induce trance.
For religions such as Santeria, aimed at producing magical or supernatural effects via the Orishas, the trance state is of prime importance. A survey of hypnotism and hypnotherapy indicates that there is enormous power in the subconscious, and that some of this power can be released, directed, and used when the subject is in the trance state. Whether the power comes from the subject’s mind or from an external psychic entity such as an Orisha, a saint, or an angel does not detract from its effectiveness. Light can do its job whether it comes from the main electrical supply, a battery, or a hand-operated dynamo. A devout Santerian may believe that the archangel Michael, St. Catherine, or Shango the Orisha has miraculously restored his health. The observable, objective, scientific fact is that he really has been healed. If it is the patient’s own subconscious mind-power that has done it, via his belief in benign paranormal entities, that does not lessen the healing effect by one iota. It is also worth considering the possibility that the benign psychic entities are perfectly real and objective phenomena and that they perform their healing miracles by enabling the human subject to activate the therapeutic powers in his or her own subconscious or superconscious mind.
When entire groups are participating in hypnotic rhythmic movement in Santerian and similar ceremonies, it is useful to compare the phenomena with what has been described medically as mass hysteria. This has three major components: mimicry, contagion, and loss of mental and physical control. Those affected by it seem to imitate the movements of those around them, and the behaviour spreads as if it were a contagious disease — yet no viruses or bacteria so far discovered have been able to spread at this rate.
An unfortunate French priest named Urbain Grandier was burnt at the stake on August 18, 1634, in connection with an outbreak of mass hysteria at the Ursuline convent of Loudun in Poitou. Although acquitted at his first trial, Grandier made the fatal mistake of criticizing Cardinal Richelieu and was subsequently tortured before being burned at the stake.
A similar outbreak of mass hysteria in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 led to the deaths of twenty people and the imprisonment of another two hundred, five of whom died in prison. The tragedy began with the dramatically hysterical behaviour of two girls who said that they were bewitched.
An even stranger series of phenomena was associated with a Jansenist deacon named François de Paris who was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Medard in Paris in 1727. Miracles of healing were reported from his tomb, and in the presence of many witnesses, those suffering from deafness, arthritis, rheumatism, blindness, tumours, fevers, and ulcerous sores were all healed. One of the most famous cases concerned the niece of Pascal, the pioneering mathematician. She had a severe eye ulcer that was cured by a Jansenist miracle.
Following these healing miracles came strange convulsions and weird distortions of the human body that would have been impossible in the normal conscious state. Some of the strangest aspects of these supernormal happenings were cases of apparent invulnerability. A member of the then Paris Parliament, Louis-Basile Carre de Montgeron, gave a detailed account of one of the convulsionaires, as they are called, a twenty-year-old girl, Jeanne Maulet, who was struck repeatedly in the stomach with a sledgehammer and seemingly took no harm from it whatsoever. In normal circumstances, a single blow would have been fatal. Other convulsionaires were attacked with swords, axes, knives, and drills — which all failed to injure them. Is it possible that the seemingly limitless power of the mind can really do all this? The witnesses were totally convinced — even those who had gone with the intention of proving that the Jansenists were frauds.
Although most western cultures seem to demonstrate a strong dislike — even fear — of the symptoms of mass hysteria, it is neither disliked nor feared by devotees of the ancient African religions. The tendency there is to regard it as a manifestation of possession by a divine power or psychic entity such as an Orisha. This attitude to individual or group manifestations of hysterical behaviour could lead to the appointment of an individual as a shaman, prophet, seer, Babalawo, or Iyalocha largely because he or she demonstrated hysterical behaviour or went into periodic trance states.
Contemporaries naturally assumed that the bizarre behaviour was the result of contact with the spirit world and that the seer could convey messages from the gods and from dead ancestors. These communications could include vital information about where game was located, how enemies could be defeated, and how injured or sick people could be healed.
The head of an Orisha or a Ioa.
In addition to the nexus between mass hysteria and trance states, there is also a theory that the induction of a very deep and permanent trance might account for the phenomenon generally categorized as zombiism. In contemporary Voodoo it is believed that the snake–deity, or python–god, is invoked to animate the zombie. The sorcerer, or enchanter, using the process is thought to have become the owner and master of the moving corpse. Ancient African religious and magical practices combine with equally old western occultism and certain aspects of traditional Catholicism to create the ceremony at which the zombie is reanimated and made subservient to the sorcerer.
Haitian Voodoo and zombiism are best understood within their historical context because they played a significant role in the successful slave revolution that ended French rule on the island. In 1791 France was in revolutionary turmoil and the Haitian slaves were being inspired to rebel by the mysterious sorcerer-priest Dutty Boukman. He led them into a secret rendezvous in the depths of the forest, accompanied by a terrifying storm that acted as a dramatic background to their proceedings. Here Boukman sacrificed a pig, and his revolutionaries drank its blood. They then stormed many of the plantations, and their owners — known as the plantocracy — were slaughtered. Boukman himself was captured by the French soon after the start of the rebellion that he had inspired. They decapitated him and displayed his head in the hope of quelling the leg
end of his invincibility — but it had the opposite effect and the rebellious slaves fought harder than ever for their freedom. It took a further twelve years for the revolutionaries to establish their new Republic of Haiti under the leadership of President Toussaint L’Ouverture.
The sorcerer or magician in charge of the zombie is known as a bokor. Traditionally, the bokor removes a newly dead corpse from its grave and uses spells to rekindle a spark of life within it. For those who believe in the existence of zombies, the resurrected corpse can eat, drink, excrete, hear, and speak. According to Voodoo folklore, the zombie does not know who it was prior to being zombified and has no memory at all of its earlier human life. It lurches from side to side as it walks, and the rest of its actions are clumsy, awkward, and robotic in character. The voice, when it speaks, is decidedly nasal, and this is thought to be due to the funeral custom of padding out the nostrils of the corpse with cotton wool.
Rational explanations of zombiism involve the use of drugs similar to the one that Father Laurence gave Juliet in Shakespeare’s play so she would appear to be dead. According to this theory, the bokor administers such a drug to the victim who is destined to become a zombie and digs up the apparent corpse a few days later. Some partial antidote is administered, and the revived victim faces a life of mindless slavery to the bokor, or to some new owner to whom the bokor has sold that victim.
Another theory involves the use of hypnotism at a very profound level — so deep in fact that the bokor’s victims never regain their original self-consciousness. Both methods could be combined so that the drugs and hypnotism reinforced each other in producing the traditional zombie-state in the victim.