What is the "mentality of the shaman?" By way of contrast with our usual western understanding of artists, and as an introduction to what is partially meant by a New Artist, and at somewhat of a personal risk, I include the following account:
My shamanic teacher told me. He told me never to reveal his identity. Therefore I shall refer to him as S.W., one of his aspects. S.W. began by relating the following strange incidents that happened to him as a younger man, after he had been studying with his teacher, T--, for awhile:
t**S.W. said that, once, at the zoo, he went into a trance and looked at a gorilla. The gorilla moved behind a rock. S.W. got him in view again and went into a trance. The gorilla threw a banana peel at him.
t**S.W. also said that he began to have intuitive experiences while watching sports on television. In some way, he was able to see the interpersonal interworkings of the participants on an unobvious level and, thus, to know who would win. He also, at times, felt that he could affect the stock market. He did this by entering a trance and affecting the energy. "People balance positive and negative arguments. I was simply able, through this energy, to make the positive arguments more convincing."
t**Once S.W. let someone use his house and they really messed it up. They had given him a sizeable deposit which he kept and they sued him. Two days before the trial, the person suddenly had to have heart surgery.
t**S.W. said that he was once way out in the desert, on an old dirt road, up in a canyon, when he backed into a ditch. He got out of his car and immediately panicked. He was a long way from any civilization, and no one came up that canyon especially in the middle of the week. Finally, he calmed down and walked over to a stream. "Bubbling Brook," he asked, "What do you think?" The stream replied, "S.W., this is definitely a camel tying situation." The stream was referring to a little paradox of aphorisms that S.W. had been contemplating at that time as a guide to human action. The aphorisms were: "Don't push the river, it flows by itself." and "Have faith in Allah, but be sure to tie your camel first." This perked S.W. up quite a bit so he got out his jacks and began digging the car out. Almost as soon as he began, he heard a truck's engine, coming up the canyon. It turned out to be a surveyor from the Dept. of Interior who was remapping that part of the state. He was driving a jeep with a winch and pulled S.W.'s car out in about 5 minutes. S.W. could never explain why that surveyor chose to survey that particular canyon then. In fact, he had never seen anyone in that canyon before, or since. S.W. said "I can still not decide now whether it was a "camel tying" situation or one of trusting "the river?"
t**Another time, S.W. was backing out of a driveway in Pennsylvania and drove into a culvert with his left rear wheel. He got out to inspect the situation and, just as he reached the back of his car, a tow truck was coming down the road. He flagged the driver down, and the tow truck pulled him out and didn't even charge him.
t**After practicing for a while,
S.W. said that he discovered that he had a personal relationship with
his electric appliances. When he bought them, they never needed
warranty repairs or broke.
t**Once, S.W. visited someone. As
he came to the door, there was a cat on the porch railing. The person
said "stay away from that cat, it is mean and never likes people."
"We went in and started talking. As we sat, the cat came in, jumped
in my lap and fell asleep. Butterflies and dragonflies sometimes
landed on me."
t**S.W. said that he was standing in front of a restaurant waiting for someone when two women got out of a car. "Their faces were masks of anger and man-hating that you sometimes see in women walking around these days." One of them had a wad of money in her hand. S.W. had an intuition that she would drop some of the money. She dropped a $10 bill at his feet and kept walking. He called to her and gave her the bill back. "She didn't even thank me." Another time, a clerk was giving him change and he had an intuition that he would give him too much.
t**Once, S.W. wrote an important letter to 5 people. Within the space of two weeks, he met all of them on the streets of Flagstaff, where he was living at the time. "Although I had never had chance encounters with any of them there before and some of them lived as much as 75 miles away."
t**S.W. said that he lived part-time on some forested land in Washington. The person who owned some adjoining land decided to clear-cut his property. He was doing this because he was poor and needed the money. S.W. thought about this. On the one hand, he felt sorry for the guy. But he realized something larger: "We can no longer afford to have people on this planet who are so dumb that the only way they can figure to get money is by cutting down 200 year old trees." This guy also had been nasty to a number of people in the area. S.W. made a prayer. About two weeks later, on Easter Sunday morning, S.W. was lying in bed when he heard repeated banging against the window, over and over. It was a robin that was repeatedly flying against the window. Then other birds, robins and sparrows, began doing the same thing. This went on for about three months and then stopped. About eight months later, there was a rare lightening storm. A lightening bolt hit the clear-cutter's property while he was there. Some days later, he was found walking on the highway by the police. He couldn't remember his name. Also, he had been sponging water from the well of his neighbor on the other side. This person wanted to clear-cut his own property and had supported this lumbering. The lightening knocked out the well and, later, that neighbor lost his job. Within a year, both properties were for sale.
After S.W. told me these things, of his young days as a shaman, he paused as if thinking. I had the impression he was wondering whether he should go on. Finally S.W. said: "I didn't know how or why these things happened and I still don't know. They just happen."
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Then S.W. said: "One day I went out to the woods to cast a spell. I forgot what the matter was, but it was for a personal gain. Although I had cast spells outside before, I usually cast them indoors. After I had begun, I suddenly realized how petty and irreverent I was. I somehow was allowed the opportunity at that moment to experience the forces of the earth as I had not experienced them before, to really see them. When I had this realization, casting a spell for a personal gain seemed not only evil but laughingly absurd. In all the time I had been practicing, I imagined that I was connecting to these forces but I had been really ignorant. I did not even know Who I Was Talking To. I had centered it in myself and imagined a fantasy. This is quite easy to do when the forces of the earth are called up indoors because we don't have the same direct experience of them as we do out of doors. But even out of doors, we can have difficulty in seeing Who We Are Talking To. We have to reach that level of development to see Who It Is. That experience changed me and my shamanism. I believe that OLOMA and the Others did this purposely to me. It was their way to hook me into shamanism. To allow me to have these strange experiences that benefitted me personally and then one day to show me what I had been doing. I can still do acts for personal gain, if OLOMA wishes it, but it now seems unimportant in light of the real magic work that must be done on this planet."