Shamanistic Rituals of Initiation and Techniques of Ecstasy in the Caves of the Paleolithic

The ubiquity of shamanism is as striking as its antiquity. We find it in such diverse areas as Aboriginal Australia, Siberia, parts of Africa, North America (circumpolar regions), Central and South America as well as parts of Europe. As Joseph Campbell wrote, this force: "moves within, and is helped or hindered, by historical circumstances, but is to such a degree constant for mankind that we may jump from Hudson Bay to Australia, Tierra del Fuego to Lake Baikal, and find ourselves well at home".

In my late teens, while visiting my cousin in the South of France, I reluctantly agreed to go and visit the caves of Lascaux; it was the proper thing to do but I had much rather gone shopping ( ! ). Nothing could have prepared me for that profoundly moving experience. After driving on the highway in a comfortable car I was not prepared for that great leap backward, “the real leap backward that the mind and heart must take, and do take, in the sacred caverns of the Dordogne”. As I entered the caves, silence inhabited me; it was as if I was holding my breath; I was in awe. Now, I contemplate these paintings as I would universal sources of lyric poetry or as a reflection of the deep abiding source of form in the human mind; I think those images trigger (for me) the archetypal formative force that gives shape to structures that fascinate and hold the human mind. It was a numinous experience that was partly recaptured when I came across the book Les Chamanes de la Prehistoire by Jean Clottes and David Lewis­ Williams. The illustrations brought me back to the same sense of awe and reverence for the presence of Spirit.