Painting by Sergey Michaylov
“As the geometer who sets himself
To square the circle and who cannot find,
For all his thought, the principle he needs,Just so was I seeing this new vision,
I wanted to see how our image fuses
Into the circle and finds its place in it.Here powers failed my high imagination.”
– Dante, THE DIVINE COMEDY
“Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye.”
– PLATO
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Through rock art of our ancestors we can access visions of the past. If it was not for the art of our Cro-Magnon ancestors we would never have known about what has been called the hump of the Irish Elk (fatty humps don’t fossilize). These paintings are not just art, but ‘items of evidence in their own right for historical processes’ (Dowson 1994:332). Here Dowson was referring to the complex and interactive relationships between San Bushmen and Bantu farmers. Rock art offers us something even more remarkable than representations of the past and insights into historical processes, it offers us a window into our own cognitive evolution.
One of the enigmas of the Upper Palaeolithic rock art are the geometric patterns, such as grids, parallel lines, zigzags, dots, spirals, nested curves and filigrees, that appear either on heir own or combined with more complex images. Recent theories, such as that of Lewis-Williams, point to the possibility that these may be ‘neural artefacts‘ left to us by trancing shamans – clues to the states of consciousness that produced them.
Lewis-Williams and his colleague Thomas Dowson (1988) assert that human‘s all through history have the same nervous system in common, and that the persistence of certain symbols can be ascribed, not necessarily to a continuing symbolic tradition, but to ‘the antiquity of the human nervous system and its generation of entoptic phenomena.‘
Lewis-Williams and Dowson (1988:202, 1992) argue that ‘entoptic‘ be considered as a generic term from the Greek ‘within vision‘ and that entophthalmic is a more accurate label for phenomena originating in the eye.
These mental images are luminous, pulsating, expanding or contracting, blending and changing geometric forms. They include zigzags, dots, grids, meandering lines and U-shapes.
(Lewis-Williams 1995:6)
Dronfield suggests the use of ‘subjective visual phenomena‘ to cover all probabilties, including entoptic, entophthalmic, phosphene and hallucinatory visual experience (Dronfield 1993:181).
Subjective visual phenomena are visual percepts or percept-like experiences which are ‘generated‘ or spontaneously released within the neural network of the visual pathway, having their source at various points between the retinas and processing areas of the brain. Almost all people are likely to have some experience of this. Phenomena such as ‘spots before the eyes‘, ‘seeing stars‘ or the flashes of colour when rubbing or tightly closing the eyes are examples of phosphenes. The fuller range of phenomena can only be seen, however, by either induction of altered states of consciousness such as in hallucinogen intoxication, trance, stress, by stimuli such as flickering light or sensory deprivation, or in certain psychopathological conditions such as migraine, epilepsy or schizophrenia.
(Dronfield 1993:181)
In 1845 a French psychiatrist, Jacques Moreau, described the form constants of hallucinations as projections. He began exhaustive experiments with psychoactives and long before the anti-psychiatric movement suggested that one should study mental illness by artificially inducing it through the use of substances like hashish. He noticed that the phenomena experienced in hallucination were the same whether induced by ‘nitrous oxide, opium, alcohol, thorny apple, belladonna, henbane, half sleep‘ (hypnogogic sleep) or ‘total sleep, dizziness, fevers, convulsive disorders‘ (epileptic seizures), ‘neuroses, hunger, thirst, or intense cold.‘ To this list I would add: migraines, nitrogen narcosis, hypnosis, photostimulation, electrical current and some neurological effects of disease like tertiary syphilis.
In the 1950‘s, German psychologist, Max Knoll noted similarities between abstract patterns induced by electrical stimulation or hallucinogenic substances like LSD with patterns in southern African art.
Some researchers, like Heinrich Kluver, have suggested that the ‘geomerty‘ of hallucination actually reflects the neurological structure and processing functions of the brain (1966). Kluver was among the first to try and identify and categorise what could be considered as constants in hallucinatory experiences:
The author‘s analysis of the hallucinatory phenomena appearing chiefly during the first stages of mescaline intoxication yielded the following form contants: (a) grating, lattice, fretwork, filigree, honey-comb, or chessboard; (b) cobweb; (c) tunnel, funnel, alley, cone, or vessel; (d) spiral. Many phenomena are, on close examination, nothing but modifications and transformations of these basic forms.
The tendency towards ‘geometrization,‘ as expressed in these from constants, is also apparent in the following two ways: (a) the forms are frequently repeated, combined, or elaborated into ornamental designs and mosaics of various kinds; (b) the elements constituting these forms, such as the squares in a chessboard design, often have boundaries consisting of geometric forms. At times, the boundaries are represented by lines so thin that it may be impossible to say whether they are black or white.
(McNemar & Merrill, 1942, p.177)
In 1970 the Scientific American carries an article by the psychologist Gerald Osler, highlighting ‘phosphenelike figures’ in prehistoric cave drawings.
Ronald K. Siegel and Murray E. Jarvik have done some of the most comprehensive work in categorising hallucinogenic phenomena. No criteria has been established to separate the cultural content with the cross-cultural phenomena.
The most apparent aspect of our findings on drug-induced hallucinations in man is the presence of form, colour, and movement constants in the visual imagery. These constants are primarily lattice-tunnel forms, red colours, and exploding and rotational movements. The imagery appears to the observer as a movie or slide show located in front of his eyes and is characterised by a bright light in the centre of the visual field. Complex imagery, consisting of recognisable people and objects, can overlay and sometimes replace these constants as the drug experience progresses from an initial geometric and fragmented quality to more memory images.
(Siegel and Jarvik 1975:144)
Some have suggested that form constants, like spirals, result from the projection of retinal blood vessels and capillaries, but others show that ‘the pattern and structures of retinal vessels are simply not regular and geometrical as drug-induced visual imagery. It remains possible, however, that such entoptic structures only provide the basic structural templates for cognitive elaboration in higher centres of imaginary constants.‘
(Siegel and Jarvik 1975:144)
It was the 1981 paper of Francis Thackeray and colleagues that made a link between Siegel’s research and rock engravings from southern Africa.
Lewis-Williams had already made the connection between rock art and shamanism after serendipitous insight concerning a painting of an eland, one of the ubiquitous ‘metaphors’ in southern African, San (Bushman) rock art. He was working on his book BELEIVING AND SEEING at the time.
… one day, I was looking at a picture in which there was a dying eland and a man apparently holding its tail. The man had hoofs, like the eland; his hair was standing out, like the eland’s hair; his legs were crossed, in imitation of the eland’s legs. I suddenly saw that the dying eland was a metaphor for the dying medicine man. Shaman’s are said to ‘die’ when they enter the spirit world through trance. And the dying eland is a source of potency. The penny dropped, and I thought, how could I have been so dumb not to see it before? (from an interview with New Scientist, 8 June, 1991)
For years archaeologists had believed that by simply quantifying various features of paintings a pattern would emerge. But without the shamanistic context certain features, like the bending forward posture with the arms back, which are symbols of trance, were not even counted.
The paper by Francis Thackeray inspired Lewis-Williams to explore form constants in the context of shaministic trance and altered states of consciousness.
Dave Whitley has studied Native American petroglyphs (rock carvings), and has come to similar conclusions as those of Lewis-Williams. According to ethnography of the Shoshone and Paiute (of the Coso Range east of Sierra Navada) ‘ the places shamans made rock art were held to be portals to the supernatural; cracks and caves in the rock were interpreted literally as openings to the beyond’ (quoted in Roach 1998:54). Whitely says, “there has been a tendency among archaeologists to regard the study of ritual and belief as less scientific and less relevant than the study of technology and subsidence. ‘It’s that bumper sticker: ‘He who dies with the most toys winds.’ Which is to me, a very shallow, materialistic view of human culture.’
While Lewis-Williams and others use the word ‘shaman’, I would argue that it should only be used in its broadest sense, as we do not have enough ethnographical data to confirm the social role of the artists. The word shaman should be read here as referring to those who were skilled at generating meaningful images during trance – metaphor craftsmen whose skill, I would argue, on the basis of proliferation, was valued and/or feared by their society, especially during times of crisis (Guenther 1975:161-166, Dowson 1994:332-345). While I prefer the term metaphor generators, I will continue using ‘shamans’ for aesthetic reasons, having qualified my use here.
Accepting that our ancestors validated experiences that interpreted the world through trance, has serious implications for the way we perceive the history of our species. It also poses serious questions about the present day power relations that criminalize and pathologise such experiences.
In the context of rock art, entoptics are usually discussed as phenomena related to early stages of trance, and as products of common human neurological heritage. In this paper I would like to use both of these ideas to explore the possibility that entoptics hold important clues about the process of producing symbolic representation, about the way new metaphors emerge. I will also make some suggestions about the shaman‘s status and role as, what I have dubbed, metaphor generator.
The visual records of these experiences may be clues to a peculiarly efficient process for, weakening the influence of socially mediated meaning, making unusual associations, and generating new metaphors. I will also suggest that these neural artefacts are clues to the psychological profile of shamans.
According to Lewis-Williams‘ taxonomy, there are six types of form constants:
(1) grids, lattices, expanding hexagonal patterns
(2) sets of parallel lines
(3) dots and short flecks
(4) zigzag lines crossing the field of vision
(5) nested catenary curves
(6) filigrees or thin meandering lines.
Apart from the six types of form constants there are also seven principles of perception:
(1) Replication
(2) Fragmentation
(3) Integration
(4) Superpositioning
(5) Juxtapositioning
(6) Reduplication
(7) Rotation. More complex hallucinatory images are a variation and combination of entoptics.
Together with Thomas Dowson, Lewis-Williams published his model in the now famous ‘Signs of All Times: Entoptic Phenomena in Upper Palaeolithic Art‘ (in Current Anthropology 1988).
‘The model‘s integrity was then demonstrated by applying it to three artistic traditions known ethnographically, and thus independently of the neuropsychological research, to be shamanistic and therefore implicated in altered states. These were South American Tukano art, North American Coso Range rock art, and San rock art in southern Africa. Once the utility of the model had been demonstrated it was applied to the Upper Palaeolithic art of Western Europe‘ (Blundell 1998:4).
Dronfield disagrees with Lewis-Williams‘ categorisation of images associated with trance. Dronfield‘s analytical model is more careful to distinguish between ‘non-iconic subjective visual imagery‘ that is produced directly from the nervous system and is diagnostic of altered states of consciousness, and subjective visual imagery that is not diagnostic of altered states (Dronfield 1993, 1995, 1996). He would, for example, put regular sine-wave type lines and orderly zig zags in the second category, and reserve the first for ‘an irregular, steeply curved meander which often turns back on itself,‘ and ‘fortification patterns,‘ which he defines as ‘a zig zag composed of scintillating coloured bars which vary in complexity of arrangement, but which do not usually meet to form ‘corners‘.
Diagnostic and undiagnostic subjective images are further distinguished from ‘non-subjective,‘ aesthetically determined, and culturally mediated imagery.
Dronfield has shown that iconic abstract art does not contain the same frequency of subjective visual imagery as ‘non-subjective arts.‘
A common critisism of the ideas involved in this thesis is that non-iconic subjective visual phenomena simply correspond with the basic range of fundamental shapes in all geometric art. This criticism is, however, based on a misconception. Some ‘fundamental‘ geometric shapes such as squares and triangles do not seem to occur subjectively. Furthermore, some subjective forms such as filigrees and apparently random clouds of dots or blobs are not geometric at all.
(Dronfield 1993:183)
Paul Bahn (1996) claims that the presence of phosphone motifs in the art of 3-4 year olds questions their status as diagnostic of trance and shamanic activities. It must be pointed out, however, that 3-4 year olds have enormous associative capacity necessary for early learning. Their subsequent capacity for arbitrary associations (Bernstein 1965, Bruner 1978) and for generating metaphors is not dissimilar to trancing adults. (similar levels of associative capacity in adults is often interpreted as pathological.) Howard Gardner and Ellen Winner, researched the human ability to produce metaphors, and found that:
… the highest number of appropriate metaphors was secured from the preschool children, who even exceeded collage students; moreover, these three- and four-year-olds fashioned significantly more appropriate metaphors than did children aged seven or eleven… Quite possibly, the most intriguing phenomena encountered so far in (a different study of early metaphor) is the capacity of at least some young children to perform this game at an astonishingly high level.
(Gardner and Winner 1979: 131, 132-133)
I suggest that the link between subjective visual imagery and other images is not one of content but of process. In other words, images that are clearly diagnostic of altered states of consciousness, precede the culturally mediated, symbolic representations that are products of this experience.
I would make a further distinction between stages in the process in which the subjective images are, in a De Sausseurian sense, ‘percepts‘, but not ‘concepts‘. In other words, in the early stages of hallucination, subjective images are not signs in any sense. They are non-iconic.
Drawing on the work of Siegel and Jarvik, Lewis-Williams and Dowson proposed a three-stage model for understanding the progression of altered states of consciousness:
1. geometrical shapes known as ‘entoptic‘ phenomena
2. entoptic phenomena experienced in the first stage is interpreted according to personal and cultural experience. This is the stage of ‘construal.‘
3. drawn through a vortex into an almost real-like experience of the hallucination. This is referred to as the ‘iconic‘ stage.
To perceive a progression from a ‘simple‘ entoptic image to a more complex image is problematic. The associative process is complex to start with. A process-orientated perspective would see images as verbs rather than nouns, events rather than objects.
To illustrate the relationship between subjective sensory stimulus (self stimulus in this case) I will begin with the sense of sound, which is easier for most people (who have not entered trance) to understand.
Think of the experience in which you are surrounded by ‘white noise’. Taking a shower is a good example. This white noise contains within it the probabilities of many different sounds. You may hear the telephone ring, someone call your name, or a song you’ve just been listening to.
This auditory hallucination is also known as ‘proprioception’ or ‘stereognosis,’ the body’s knowledge of itself, or more accurately the nervous system’s communication with itself (Lycaeum note: the best description of the ketamine experience is that the nervous system is talking to itself). You can actually ‘tune in’ to this humming by imagining and then concentrating on a humming or ringing noise in your ear. After a while it becomes louder and louder. You are listening to your own nervous system. During certain altered states of consciousness, this stereognosis is turned up, and the producer-hearer interprets voices, or whatever.
Lweis-Williams did not exclude audial aspects of hallucination in his analysis. Foe example, he attributes the painting of bees in conjunction with U-shapes as a representation of the buzzing that often accompanies hallucinations.
While Lewis-Williams finds associative progression from buzzing to bees, Dronfield finds a progression from the spirals and lattices experienced in hallucination (decorating Irish passage-tombs), with the notion of access to the spiritual realm and contact with the dead.
Laboratory subjects who report a vortex taking them into deep trance also say that the sides of the vortex are marked by lattice (…) Some Western subjects go on to liken the lattice to multiple television screens. The images on these ‘screens‘ are the first spontaneously produced iconic hallucinations: they include ‘recognizable people and objects‘. Eventually, ‘more formed memory images‘ associated with powerful emotional experience overlay and replace the geometrics (…). If Neolithic people were led by belief and emotionally charged ritual to expect visions of their ancestors, the dead would very likely have appeared in the segments of the lattice that were an integral part of the vortex through which they moved into the spiritual realm.
(Dronfield 1996: 62, referring to research by Siegel and Jarvik 1975:111, 127, 139, 143, fig.27; and Siegel 1977:136)
Dronfield cites research by Graziano that shows how the experience of spiralling, tunnelling and vortex motion is linked to area V5 (also called medial superior temporal area, or MST) of the brain‘s visual cortex. In theory, spontaneous firing of V5 neurons could generate subjective visual impressions of these types of motion (Dronfield 1996:40).
Association becomes increasingly epigenetic (driven by memes not genes) as the brain and, consequently, society, evolves. Inherited behaviour/memory (instinct) is a product of association by natural selection. Conditioned behaviour/memory (episodic) is a product of association by reinforcement of behaviour. Symbolic behaviour/memory (reflection) is a product of association by mimicry. Aesthetic behaviour/memory (culture) is a product of association by metaphor. As association becomes increasingly epigenetic, it becomes more flexible, and recursively informs the body.
Exploring association by metaphor further lets consider the presence of therianthropes in rock art. Therianthropes are those beings who are part animal part human, and belong primarily to the third stage of trance. What does the mind need to do in order to produce a therianthrope? My hypothesis is that it must be capable of analogical thinking – the ability to make unusual associations, and the ability to generate metaphor.
Visual and other artistic representations off such symbols appears to have peeked about 40 000 years ago, with the proliferation of beads, necklaces, pendants, carvings, rock engravings, cave wall paintings – and therianthropes. This period has been described by many as a ‘cultural explosion‘ (Mithen 1996:27. The notion of an explosion has recently been problematised, but this does not effect the question we are exploring. How did the ability to produce visual symbolic representation, the ability to produce metaphor, evolve?
Archaeologist, Steven Mithen has developed an hypothesis that appeals to the insights of neuropsychology and cognitive science. These disciplines have been progressively moving away from a unified cognition and are instead proposing a number of different cognitive modules which interact with each other to different degrees. Mithin has adopted the analogy of a Swiss army knife with all its specialised devises, each designed to cope with a different task, to describe mind. Neuropsychologists have adopted terms such as ‘module,‘ ‘cognitive domains‘ and ‘intelligence’s‘ to describe each of these specialised devices. Of great significance, in this respect, is Howard Gardner‘s Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligence’s.
Gardner identifies seven intelligence’s: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal.
… in normal human intercourse one typically encounters complexes of intelligence’s functioning together smoothly, even seamlessly, in order to execute intricate human activities.
(Gardner 1983)
To identify the multiple intelligence’s of the mind that Gardner uses a stringent set of criteria. For instance, he feels that there should be evidence that the core capacity may become isolated by brain damage, either in terms of losing the capacity (while all others remain unimpaired), or losing all other capacities yet remaining competent in the proposed intelligence’s. He also feels that one should be able to see a distinct developmental history in the child for the intelligence, and that it out to be developed to different degrees in different individuals. By using such criteria, Gardner arrives at his set of seven intelligence’s: his blades for the Swiss army knife of the modern mind. (Mithen 1996:40)
Gardner, also known for research into the nature of genius, suggests that the most exceptionally creative individuals are those who are able to build better connections between the modules.
Turning to evolutionary psychology Mithen argues that each module is a product of natural selection. Each cognitive module has been selected to cope with one specific adaptive problem faced by hunter-gatherers during the Pleistocene. He appeals to Leda Cosmides and John Tooby who argue this point by saying:
– Solving uniquely different problems with a single reasoning device would have led to errors. Those who had specialised mental modules dedicated to specific types of problem would have had an adaptive edge.
– The ability of children to learn so rapidly suggests some pre-existing templates (like Chomsky‘s ‘poverty of stimulus‘ argument, used to support his theory of universal grammar).
– In order to make an efficient decision, a human needs to frame the problem appropriately. Evaluating options using general-purpose learning would take too long.
Cosmides and Tooby list more modules than Gardner‘s intelligence’s. Theirs include: A face recognition module, a spatial relations module, a rigid objects mechanics module, a tool-use module, a fear module, a social exchange module, an emotion-perception module, a kin oriented motivations module, an effort allocation and recalibration module, a child care module, a social-inference module, a friendship module, a grammar acquisition module, a communication-pragmatics module, a theory of mind module, and so on! (Tooby and Cosmides 1992:113).
Mithen creates four umbrella cognitive domains, on the basis of what has been identified as domains of intuitive knowledge in children: language, psychology, physics and biology. (Mithen 1996:51)
There is a mass of ever-accumulating data from developmental psychology that children are indeed orn with a great deal of information about the world hard-wired into their minds. This knowledge appears to fall into four cognitive domains: language, psychology, biology and physics. For each of these one can imagine strong selective pressures for the evolution of content-rich mental modules…
(Mithen 1996:55)
Mithen appeals to the work of Noam Chomsky, Alan Leslie, Scott Atran and Elizabeth Spelke, to support the idea of domains. Together with evolutionary psychologists he suggests that prior to 40 000 years ago these domains functioned as discrete entities he calls social intelligence, natural history intelligence and technical intelligence.
I have perhaps over simplified the argument for the sake of brevity. I am primarily interested in the consequences of this theory for understanding the production of visual symbols.
Mithen suggests five properties of a visual symbol:
1) The form of the symbol may be arbitrary to its referent. This is one of the fundamental features of language, but also applies to visual symbols.
2) A symbol is created with the intention of communication.
3) There may be considerable space/time displacement between the symbol and its referent.
4) The specific meaning of a symbol may vary between individuals and indeed cultures. This often depends upon their knowledge and experience.
5) The same symbol may tolerate some degree of variability, either deliberately or unintentionally imposed.
He then suggests that there are at least three mental attributes that are involved in creating and reading visual symbols:
1) The making of a visual image involves the planning and execution of preconceived mental template.
2) Intentional communication with reference to some displaced event or object.
3) The attribution of meaning to a visual image not associated with its referent.
He proposes that while these cognitive processes may have existed in the minds of early humans, they were found in different cognitive domains – technical, social and natural intelligence respectively. ‘But the creation and use of visual symbols (as defined by his five points) requires that they function ‘seamlessly and smoothly‘ (to quote Gardner). This would require ‘links across domains‘ (to quote Karmiloff-Smith). And the result would be ‘cultural explosion‘ (to quote Sperber)‘ (Mithin 1996:162).
How did these cognitive domains become accessible to each other?
In 1976 Paul Rozin suggested that the evolution of advanced intelligence involved the ‘bringing to consciousness‘ of knowledge which was already in the human mind but located within the ‘cognitive unconsciousness‘ (Mithen 190).
Karmiloff-Smith argues that soon after modularization has occurred, the modules begin working together. She uses a very awkward term for this: ‘representational redescription‘ (RR). But what she means is quite simple. The consequence of RR is that in the mind there arise ‘multiple representations of similar knowledge‘ and ‘consequently ‘knowledge becomes applicable beyond the special purpose goals for which it is normally used and perceptual links across domains can be forged.‘ In other words thoughts can arise which combine knowledge which had previously been ‘trapped‘ within a specific domain.‘ (Mithen 1996:58)
Mithen says that language, a skill originally peculiar to social intelligence, developed the capacity to invade other domains, articulating information in ways that were relevant to them. Language ‘escaped‘ the confines of social intelligence and began the process of partial integration. In other words, as soon as symbolic representation is selected for in the cognitive domain of social intelligence, its capacity for facilitating self-reflectivity enables it to ‘enter‘ other domains, ultimately resulting in an integration of these domains via the skill of language. This is what Sperber refers to as ‘module of metarepresentation‘ (MMR). ‘As a result of the development of communication, and particularly linguistic communication, the actual domain of the meta-representational module is teeming with representations made manifest by communicative behaviours… An organism endowed with … a meta-representational module…may form representations of concepts and beliefs pertaining to all conceptual domains, of a kind that the modules in those domains might be unable to form on their own.‘ Sperber further suggested that the invasion of social intelligence by non-social information would trigger a ‘cultural explosion‘ (Mithen 1996:190)
One manifestation of this integration is animism – the anthropomorphisation of animals and what we would perceive as inanimate objects. This accounts for the presence of therianthropes in rock art.
In the Cartesian mind set the so-called objective meaning of a thing and its symbolic significance are separated. In shamanism however metaphorical meanings are complementary. This means that multiple significance’s and interpretations are the norm. As Tim Ingold put it: ‘For them (hunter-gatherers) there are not two worlds of persons (society) and things (nature), but just one world – one environment – saturated with personal powers and embracing both human beings, the animals and plants on which they depend, and the language in which they live and move‘ (Ingold 1992:42).
Mithen suggests that the collapse of the cognitive barrier between social and natural worlds led to the presentation of animals as anthropomorphic. According to him, contemporary hunter-gatherer‘s propensity to think of the natural world in social terms – the basis of totemic thought – is a product of this collapse of discrete domains.
The same collapse of cognitive barriers facilitated a perception of animals as having intent as strategies as humans do – a perception that, according to Mithin, improved the predictive powers of humans and consequently their hunting strategies (Mithin 1996:168-169).
It is surprising that Mithin does not suggest a role for trance. We know that one of the characteristic features of altered states of consciousness is ‘boundary dissolution.‘ Does this have any bearing on his hypothesis and our central question? I suggest that trance may be an explanation for the dissolution of boundaries between modules, allowing language to make new connections – metaphor!
Metaphor is usually understood as that figure of speech we use to describe one thing by suggesting another. Or as David E. Leary puts it “Metaphor consists in giving to one thing a name or description that belongs by convention to something else, on the grounds of some similarity between the two” (1990). Leary argues that all speech (and all symbolic language?) is essentially metaphorical. All words are metaphors in a certain sense, because they all refer to abstract concepts of things, rather than to the thing itself. I would agree with Leary that metaphor is the primary figure of speech, and thought, and that all thinking and all symbolic representation is essentially metaphorical or analogical. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Science is nothing but the finding of analogy.” G. Stanley Hall, one of the founders of scientific psychology in America claimed that metaphors are among the mind‘s “first spontaneous creations” and provide the basis for language development, which is essentially “fossil poetry.” The notion that metaphorical or analogical thinking forms the basis of all knowledge is widely held.
Metaphors arise when two seemingly unrelated thoughts become linked together.
David Gelernter (1994:26)
Metaphor ignites a new arc of perceptive energy…It relates hitherto unrelated experience…
George Steiner (1971:68)
Creative acts, as Koestler points out, involve “seeing an analogy where no one saw one before.”
Thomas Kuhn said,” In much of language learning … knowledge of words and knowledge of nature are acquired together, (and are) not really two sorts of knowledge at all, but two faces of the single coinage that a language provides.” (1987) In fact, Kuhn thought that the most consequential characteristic of a scientific revolution is “central change of model, metaphor, or analogy – a change in one‘s sense of what is similar to what, and of what is different.”(1987:20)
What states of consciousness are ideal for generating metaphor?
Many of the physiological and psychological aspects of trance states point to their being ideal for metaphor generation:
a hyper-associative,
low-focus,
divergent state in which the individual is open to new possibilities,
is not being distracted by anxiety or a narrow (high) focus,
and is able to destructure the limitations of previous metaphor sets as well as generate new ones.
States similar to trance are often related by people of exceptional creative ability in relation to fundamental breakthroughs. What must be stressed here is the relation of trance states to metaphor generation, not necessarily to some objective truth.
The key word in metaphor generation and the generation of human consciousness or human culture is “association.” Our perceptual categorising, memory, and learning (which depends on the first two) all depend on association. The ability to generate metaphor is the ability to make new associations.
I would like to discuss some of the features of altered states of consciousness that supported the thesis of connecting trance to the dissolution of the boundaries of cognitive domains.
LIMBIC DOMINANCE
The limbic system is the most important in the process of making new associations. Limbic (hippocampal-septal) slow wave dominance also occurs during trance states and is the reason for the hyper-associative states of trance. According to Richard Thompson, the director of the program in Neural, Informational and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Southern California, while the cerebellum is responsible for the procedural aspects of memory, i.e. What to do; the hippocampal cortical link is responsible for learning about the ‘significance of what‘s going on,‘ i.e. ‘What does it mean?‘ In this sense its connection to reasoning and attention is vital.
Mandel (1980) draws attention to the high voltage synchronous activity in the hippocampus. The role of the hippocampus in determining salience, and being trans-modal, may prove to be a major insight into the link between its central role in trance states and in metaphor generation.
PARASYMPATHETIC DOMINANCE
Winkelman‘s description of trance states also stresses limbic dominance:
Trance states associated with magico-religious practices are based on varied manipulations of the organism, all of which lead to a parasympathetic dominant state characterised by the dominance of the frontal cortex by slow wave discharges emanating from the limbic system.
(Winkelman, p.198)
It could be said that low-focus parasympathetic dominance in trance avoids the offensive/defensive narrow focus of sympathetic nervous system responses – which are high focus adrenalin driven responses.
Parasympathetic dominance usually occurs during sleep. It takes away the narrow focus of the sympathetic nervous system, helping the person to loosen associations in order to be able to integrate the new experiences that happened during the day into the long-term memory – i.e. to learn and to up grade the symbolic landscape.
The warm watery emotions of ecstatic trance are a result of the stimulation of the Vagus nerve, which is central to the parasympathetic nervous system. Feelings of intimacy and sensuality are a result of this phenomenon. I mention this to make the point that trance has a pleasurable aspect that acts as a reward response (originally intended to reward mating behaviour, and a mother‘s nurturing of her children).
Winkelman claims that intense stimulation of the sympathetic system leads to a collapse of the system and parasympathetic dominance:
In normal states of balance within the autonomous nervous system, increased activity in one division (say the sympathetic nervous system) is balanced by a response in the other (parasympathetic). However, under intense stimulation of the sympathetic system, reciprocity breaks down and a collapse of the system into a state of parasympathetic dominance occurs. Sargant (1974) noted this pattern of parasympathetic rebound or collapse can lead to erasure of previously conditioned responses, changes of beliefs, loss of memory, and increased suggestibility.
(Winkelman, p.177).
Parasympathetic dominance resulting from sympathetic ‘breakdown‘ makes sense in the context of the mythology connected with trance. It is often said that before a person can receive a vision they must overcome their own fear. Before a person is able to make novel associations, they have to get past the fear and paranoia of the sympathetic nervous system‘s adrenalin driven flight/flight responses that protect existing metaphoric schemata.
The human organism like most animals is coded to evaluate whether other animals or stimuli are ‘favourable‘ or ‘hostile.‘ In any new situation the human organism prepares to flee or fight. This can be maladaptive when new insights are needed but are resisted simply because they are unfamiliar.
The experience of fear is controlled by the flight/fight response mechanism in the brain stem. When a buck sees a lion within striking distance, for example, its flight/fight mechanism will trigger a release of adrenalin and hormones that rush through the body, producing an experience of fear, and the buck may or may not escape its predator. Once it is out of perceivable danger, the mechanism switches off and the buck happily munches grass, unperturbed.
In human beings, however, fear can‘t be switched off. It is sustained by our sense of self. Our sense of self is chiefly our sense of interiority and continuity, and prevents us from turning off the fear mechanism once it has been triggered. We continue to carry fear in our bodies in the form of anxiety (In the same way we continue to carry the shame response in the form of guilt).
The trance experience, often called the ‘death of self‘ by ‘mystics‘ from all religious traditions, can ‘switch off‘ the mechanism of fear once the frontal lobe sensations of self are temporarily ‘short circuited.‘ The same mechanism has been shown to ‘switch off‘ other neuroses like guilt, loneliness, obsession, and the limiting need for coherent and absolute meaning.
We gain some insights into San trance states from contemporary trance dancers, but they belong to communities who do not have a memory of painting. The records kept by Bleek, our only access to the views of San who remembered painting, focus on the meanings of the complex images and not on the process of the painting itself.
A prerequisite for healing is a state if consciousness called ‘kia’ – an enhanced state of consciousness, with associated behaviours, which results from the activation of ‘num’ or energy (Katz 1982:315). If the build up of num cannot be controlled, it can be a frightening experience and the kia will not be ‘deep’ enough to facilitate healing or clear communication with the spirit world.
Katz prefers to use the Kung word ‘kia’ rather than speak of trance, which he sees as ambiguous, referring to a variety of altered states. The state of kia is clearly of parasympathetic dominance.
Kia is not a unitary, unidimentional, linear experience. Kia is an altered state of consciousness, which at different times in different or the same persons may function at different levels, may capture different degrees of meaning, and may express itself in different forms of behaviour. For the Kung, kia refers to certain kinds of thoughts, feelings, and physical actions.
(Katz 1982:95)
‘Drugs‘ or psychoactive plant materials are used at times to potentiate the experience of trance. ‘If students are having considerable difficulty reaching kia, they may be given a drug at the dance, as a training device, to mitigate their intense fear and bring them closer to the kia state’ (Katz 1982:47).
RIGHT BRAIN DOMINANCE
Lex (1979), along with cortical synchronization in both hemispheres, and dominant ‘trophotropic’ (parasympathetic) state, stresses right brain dominance.
SYNESTHESIA
Another experience central to trance states, perhaps as significant as form constants, and an important clue to metaphor generation, is the experience of ‘synesthesia.‘
Synesthesia, or ‘syzygy,’ is the curious and largely unexplained phenomena in which there is a ‘cross-over’ between sensory modalities – colours are heard, sounds are seen, tastes are experienced through the sense of touch, words are tasted, etc.
This experience is far more representative of the way the brain works that the illusion of serial linearity experienced as memory. It is interesting to note that current advances in AI involve ‘synaesthetic‘ parallel and distributed processing.
In his groundbreaking study on synesthesia Cytowic (1994) suggests that synesthesia is a cross-association phenomena which takes place in the limbic system of the left hemisphere (1994:163). About 5 in a million people experience one or more aspects of this phenomenon constantly (usually the translation of sound into colour). Other people have induced an altered state of consciousness to experience the synesthesia.
Synesthesia is a conscious peek at a neural process that happens all the time in everyone. What converges in the limbic system, especially the hippocampus, is the highly processed information from sensory receptors about the world, a multisensory evaluation of it (…) A multisensory awareness is something that has been lost from conscious awareness in the majority of people, which again is what forces me to think of synesthetes as cognitive fossils.
(Cytowic 1993:167)
Like form constants, these cross-modality sensual associations are essentially meaningless but, for people who do experience then in altered states, they are often accompanied by emotional extremes.
The extensive interconnectivity of the visual cortices with other sensory relay systems allows…rerouting of information. Atypical example of this channelling potential is the experience many musicians have of ‘seeing‘ colours when listening to music; such an experience is not metaphorical, but related to the visual systems actually transcribing residual auditory input relayed through various modulators and transformers.
(Lanteigne, p.7).
Synesthesia is experienced more often than we realise. Think about the ability to read silently. How is it that in reading silently you hear the sounds of the words without any audio input? This is a case of hearing what is seen … discovered, according to legend, by St Augustine.
In his discussion of metaphor, Fernandez associates the ‘n dimensions’ or ‘continua’ that define the symbolic space of a culture with synesthesia. His argument reminds us of the medieval law of correspondences:
In synesthesia we translate experience from one sense modality, say sound, to another, say touch. We speak of hot music. The ‘law of parallel alignment’ is said to prevail. On the sound continuum of fast to slow, a certain kind of music, jazz, occupies a position parallel to that occupied by hot objects on the continuum of hot to cold. Metaphoric prediction is the same sort of translation, in our case of an inchoate subject from one domain to another, and it can be conceptualised in relation to continua.
(1974, p.124)
Such an experience may well be the birthplace of metaphorical skill. The associative process manifested in synesthesia may hold clues to more complex levels of the analogical process.
NON-ICONIC SUBJECTIVE IMAGERY AS FEEDBACK
As the father of modern scientific method, Francis Bacon, put it ‘all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe.‘ This is essentially because, as Bacon put it, ‘there is no proceeding in invention of knowledge but by similitude.‘ Our criteria for this ‘similitude‘ is our subjective experience of ourselves. In other words, our generation of symbolic representation, language and culture is a sophisticated process of self-projection and reflection. It‘s a bit like standing in a elevator that has mirrors on opposite sides – your image reproduces itself in an infinite regression of projections and reflections. There is a very unreal sense in which perception ‘is all in your head.‘
In all self-organising systems, feedback is the key to increasing complexity. It is also the key to the peculiar self-awareness of human beings. ‘ I must become an object of itself, taking on the point of view of ‘the other,‘ before it can become a subject to itself‘ (George Herbet Mead 1934).
‘The physical brain has no sensory nerves and is not aware of its own physical substance‘ (Cytowic 1993:169). The brain‘s reference is always external. Stimulating it produces sensations in other body parts. It is possible that certain subjective visual images are projections of actual forms in the brain. In other words, the brain is literally seeing itself, not representing experiences, but projecting actual neural forms.
The chief side effects of seizures and trance like states are magical thinking (increased sense of synchronicity) and increased self-reflection.
There are two modes in which the brain deals with information. One is binary on and off, each neuron fires or not. The other is graded slow potential – the gradual build-up of current at the nerve ending and this creates a wavefront.
According to Pribram, these wavefronts consist of changes in electrical potential at the fine branches of nerve endings. ‘If you look at a whole series of these together, they constitute a wavefront. They sort of line up. One comes in this way, another that way, and they interact. And all of a sudden you‘ve got your interference pattern!‘ The interference patterns of these wavefronts can give rise to illusions like those seen in moire patterns.
In the 1980‘s, biophysicist Jack Cowan, of the University of Chicago, studied the neurocircuitry of visual hallucination confirmed by Kluver‘s categories:
Then I worked out what the patterns are actually like inside the brain … There‘s a distortion in the pathway from the eye to the brain. The images inside the brain are simple basically striped.
As these stripe patterns move forward from the occipital (visual) cortex at the back of the head towards the forebrain, hallucination becomes more symbolic, more abstract. This Cowan believes accounts for the more complex multiple kaleidoscope like images. We know that the mechanisms for megalopsy (when objects appear to grow very large) and micropsy (when objects appear to shrink) are in the inferior temporal cortex – a sign that the wave front is moving forwards.
THE ROLE OF THE SHAMAN AS METAPHOR GENERATOR
If trance predispose the shaman to a peculiarly favourable state for producing metaphor, we should explore the shaman‘s role as metaphor generator, as opposed to preserver and replicator. If this was the service he or she was providing their community with, then we should expect it to happen during crisis and times of unusual stress, rather than as part of decoration or mere storytelling.
Mithen says that the ‘archaeological record shows us that Stone Age art is not a product of comfortable circumstances – when people have time on their hands; it was most often created when people were living in conditions of severe stress. The florescence of Palaeolithic art in Europe occurred at a time when environmental conditions were extremely harsh around the height of the last ice age‘ (Mithen 157).
It has become apparent that San shamans painted rock art as part of the process of negotiating social transitions, for example, the arrival of white farmers (Dowson 1994). According to Dowson ‘… rock art images point to and were implicated in the negotiation of changing social relations. Seen in this way, the art can contribute significantly to an understanding of the social processes that formed the past‘ (Dowson 1994).
The people who are most skilled at analogical thinking are often labelled as ‘schizotypal personalities.‘ People allocated to this category are experienced in what psychology calls ‘magical thinking‘ or what is referred to as ‘synchronicity‘ or, less euphemistically as ‘loosely connected thoughts‘ (Vollema and van den Bosch 1995:19). Synchronicity is the emergence, in the mind of the observer, of a meaningful pattern between things that are actually causally unrelated.
A PECULIAR PERSONALITY
Winkelman qualifies his description of the physiological factors of trance by admitting that certain personalities are predisposed to such states:
In addition to a wide range of techniques and manipulations that induce this state, conditions related to temporal lobe-dysinhibitions also predispose individuals to enter these states (Winkelman, p. 198).
In 1936, the anthropologist Paul Radin said that shamans were ‘half-crazy.‘ He also suggested that the shaman‘s pathology bore the creative seeds of future religious convention.
{The shaman displays his possession by a spirit} by publicly re-enacting his specific personal experience, that of a man suffering from a particular mental affliction. His projections, his hallucinations, his journey through space and time, thus become a dramatic ritual and served as the prototype for all future concepts of the religious road to perfection.
(quoted in Sapolsky 1997:249)
There are vestiges of this in the initiation experience of southern African sangomas. When a young person is called by the ancestors, in the process known as tswana, to become a sangoma, they suffer from an illness, inkathazo, or ‘trouble,‘ that resembles a psychotic break.
It is interesting to note that many words for diviner contain ‘ngoma,‘ which is sometimes translated as ‘the drums of affliction.‘ In Okinawan culture this ‘psychotic break‘ is called kamidari. In Korea the Mu dang suffer from Sibyong. Soyot shaman‘s from Siberia go through albys. And so on …
Many shamans, seers and prophets were epileptics. Research suggests that epileptic seizures are learnt behaviours, which have a certain amount of inherent pleasure to reinforce them. It is quite conceivable that someone prone to seizures and the visions that accompany them were able to learn how to reproduce them. There may be certain cues, perhaps isolation, certain rhythms, diet or extremes of stress that helped potentiate seizures. It is not inconceivable that in an attempt to re-experience the seizure, early shaman-life individuals practised the induction of trance through monotonous dancing and clapping rhythms, hyperventilation, sensory deprivation, sleeplessness, fasting, etc.
It has been shown through extensive research (psychiatrist Seymour Kety) that parents (or genetic lineage’s) who present with schizotypal personality disorders are more likely to give birth to dysfunctional schizophrenics (see also Kendler, Gruenberg and Kinney 1994:456; Webb and Levison 1993:81). This could also point to why in some cased societies shamanism is linked to celibacy … (Sapolsky 1997:250).
THE SELECTION PROCESS
We cannot assume that the metaphors of trancing shamans were automatically and uncritically received by their community. Literacy practises are socially and historically located and located within dynamics of power and privilege. We cannot read power into a symbol on its own, without the historical and social context that makes the symbol possible. We know nothing of the social context and processes that determine which metaphors were integrated into the cultural imagination and which were selected out.
We do know of institutionalised patterns of shamanic experience. As Alfred Kroeber pointed out in the 1940‘s, in his essay Psychosis or Social Sanction, shamanic societies recognise the first signs of hallucinations and psychoses as indicators of shamanic potential. Youths showing such potential are trained in particular culturally determined patterns of shamanic experience. ‘Thus, the schizotypal traits are channelled and standardised‘ (Sapolsky 1997:250). Shamans are not dysfunctional schizophrenics. ‘Shamans hear voices during times of crisis rather than all the time, or bellow in tongues during ceremonies rather than at the critical silent moment during a hunt. ‘In general, the psychopathologies that get rewarded among primitives are only the mild and transient ones,‘ Kroeber wrote‘‘ (Sapolsky 1997:252).
In shamanic societies it is often said that the worst illness anyone can suffer is the loss of their soul, which can occur through the sheer shock and dissolution of undifferentiated reality (Valdizen and Maldonado 1922). A striking feature of those called by the spirits to become shamans – and one not written about in any detail – is their ability to ‘re-invent themselves,‘ to coagulate out of the dissipative trance state into a role, to emerge from the undifferentiated, bearing gifts for their community. Not everyone can survive ‘the rush of dreamtime.‘ Survival depends not on the ability to perceive the illusory nature of perception, but to create metaphors that serve as transitional objects. As Nietzsche put it, ‘We have art in order not to die of the truth.‘
With Dronfield (1993:189) I would agree that ‘culture mediates between the percepts experienced in altered states and the modes of representing these percepts graphically.‘ Cultural mediation also plays a role in determining which if the products of the subjective processes of production are integrated into, and preserved in the broader social context.
For this reason, we cannot assume that the images studied represent the whole spectrum of the images that are experienced subjectively. We cannot even assume that the painter experienced these images subjectively. He or she may have been instructed and embraced the images as a culturally mediated artistic convention. There have been many valid criticisms of an exclusive shamanic interpretation of rock art. We must not forget that metaphors have a social life after trance. While trance may be necessary to generate these images initially, once transmitted orally or visually, they can be reproduced outside of trance.
I suggest, however, that trance states may be a culturally endorsed means of loosening cultural constraints, and opening up new associative possibilities. In other words, the generation of images during trance is less culturally constrained, than the production of images in other situations, and that at least a significant proportion of the images produced in rock art are innovative metaphors.
Once an unusual association had been made by a shaman, it could be communicated with a fair amount of clarity to those members of the community who were not experiencing trance, but had similar cognitive capacities, and associative processes. While others could not generate metaphors as easily, they could nevertheless comprehend the associations and integrate them into their symbolic landscapes.
IMPLICATIONS
‘Insofar as shamanism and its attendant hallucinations, metamagical thought, and psychiatric instability reflect some genetic component, these are not unfit traits being winnowed from the gene pool‘ (Sapolsky 1997:251).
During the second half of the 20th century the interest in discerning the particular cognitive styles of the shamans waned. ‘There is in fact, next to no evidence in any culture that shamanism is ‘always predicated‘ on psychiatric instability, that such a status is ‘acquired only by‘ psychosis (…) The main point of Radin‘s and Kroeber‘s ideas is not that all shamans were ‘half-crazy,‘ but that if you are half-crazy in the right way, shamanism institutes a uniquely protected and rewarding refuge‘ (Sapolsky 1997:251).
One question that calls for attention is: What kind of power did trancing symbol generators wield in their communities? There is no space here to explore this in full, but I wish to open up the question. Some would have us believe that the role of the shaman in egalitarian San society was not above that of any other member of the group. Some believe that the rock art shows evidence of the changing status of shamans (Dowson 1994:332-345, Kinahan 1991:44-48). Dowson shows how ‘the changing roles of shamans were … associated with the production of at least three categories of paintings that depict shamanic groups in different ways: communal groups, consortium groups and pre-eminent shaman groups‘ (Dowson 1994:335). This can be read to imply that there are social situations in which the shamans role becomes distinguished, in degree of importance, from the role of other people. Sometimes, the consequences are far reaching, for example, the Kinahan hypothesis about the changing role of shamans in the Hungorob, Namibia. Kinahan identifies elaborate polychrome figures in the rock art that stand out from monochrome figures that were painted earlier. He hypothesises that these figures refer to shamans whose status had increased. Using ethnographic evidence from Guenther (1975), he suggests that ‘ritual healing gained importance as a means of resolving the social difficulties arising from contact with neighbouring pastoralists and farmers. Some healers achieved prominence as ritual specialists, or shamans, and by acting as mediators they began to acquire material wealth, especially in livestock.‘ He suggests that ritual activity increased as a consequence of increasing contact with pastoralists. The shaman then began to acquire more livestock, and ironically, as pastoralism became more established the rituals of communal healing and the rock art were left behind (Kinahan 1991:44-48).
Dowson suggests that the change in the size of the shaman figures in southern African rock art, was a result of the shaman‘s ability to respond ‘to changing social circumstances in different and innovative ways; they were hammering out their own history.‘ He suggests that paintings of pre-eminent shamans ‘show that painters were not ineluctably governed by conventions and structures,‘ instead, ‘artists manipulated design elements to negotiate a prominent position in society (…) the association of at least some of the images with supernatural potency and the spirit world imparted an incontrovertible factuality to the images and to the kind of cosmos they depicted. Manipulating the art was therefore not far from manipulating the universe itself‘ (Dowson 1994:340:341). This suggests that they had an unusual set of adaptive skills – exactly what one would expect from innovative metaphor generators, who are able to adapt existing social forms with less anxiety over breaking conventions, and with greater success than others.
We know, for example, that San shaman‘s traded spirituality with Bantu farmers. This act resulted in securing them a certain amount of political power. ‘Bushman shamans made rain not just for their own people but also for their agropastoralist neighbours and were, at least sometimes, rewarded by being given cattle or a potion of the farmer‘s crops (eg, Hook 1908; Stanford 1910; Prins 1990)‘ (Dowson 1994:334).
In certain historical circumstances, altered states of consciousness become a site of struggle: groups and individuals compete for control of, and deeper insight into, ‘religious‘ mental imagery because possession of arcane knowledge sanctions political power (cf. Lewis-Williams & Dowson 1993; Dowson 1994; Friedal et al 1993). The ways in which individuals modify and explore the mental imagery of altered states of consciousness is therefore often politically important. Their idiosyncratic mental imagery, as experienced and as depicted, can become associated with attempts to subvert political structures. Individuals negotiate their positions of power by delicately playing idiosyncrasy off against socially sanctioned rituals, beliefs and visions. They have to know how far they can ho before they estrange those whom they wish to influence.
(Lewis-Williams 1995:19).
There are more recent examples of the charismatic leadership and power brokerage, that experts in trace display, and the kind of social status they are likely to receive, especially during times of crisis (Guenther 1975:161-166).
IN CONCLUSION
I propose that if we add the practise of trance to Mithen‘s hypothesis of the dissolution of cognitive modules, as well as the potential for non-iconic subjective visual images to initiate a powerful feedback loop that would facilitate more complex neural organisation, we may begin on the road towards understanding the cognitive state that lies at ‘the heart of the start of art.‘ We also need to begin exploring the role of so-called shamans, as metaphor generators and the implications this interpretation has for power relations in San society.
We are living in an age in which trance is once again being considered a valid experience of reality. What consequences will this have for the way we perceive out ancestors? What can we learn from them in order to explore our society‘s own experiences of trance and hallucination? Have they left us more than neural artefacts? Have they left us some clues, in their art and its symbols?
Thank you.
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