Rite of the First Shaman

Illustration by Russell M. Hossain from the color insert of Origins of the Gods

Rite of the First Shaman

by Andrew Collins, author of many books, including the new release Origins of the Gods

Our destination is just beyond the eastern limits of the Mediterranean Sea. The age in geological terms is the Middle Pleistocene, and the date sometime around 330,000 years ago. The climate is pretty much as it is today, although the river valleys saddled between the deep rocky hills are much more verdant, much more fertile in nature.

Some little way inland, the topography starts to rise toward the east, its distant horizon crowned with low mountain peaks. Two mountains in particular are like the horns of some enormous landscape beast, and for some reason, these draw the eye for longer than is necessary.

As the light gradually fades and the full moon is seen to rise from the direction of the twin peaks, the ear now catches the slowly rising sound of a bizarre vocal cacophony. It seems to be a mixture of high and low guttural chants produced by the deepest parts of the human windpipe in a manner that would disturb even the most accomplished Mongolian throat singers.

This constant noise seems to be coming from within a steep rocky cliff, in particular from beyond the opening of a large cave entrance. Inside burns a fierce fire lit somewhere close to the center of the large cavern. From the flames comes a thick pungent smoke that immediately invades the throat, causing a violent reaction to this unwanted intrusion into the body. Yet very quickly, the effects of the smoke become tolerable as the interior of the cave starts to become a little hazy.

From out of the smoke appears a strange figure, just over five and half feet tall, with dark, swarthy skin, deep-set eyes, a heavy brow ridge, and a mass of coarse, dark hair. He is a man of some power who crouches slightly as he rhythmically stomps on the ground around his feet. A loincloth made of hanging cords and dried reeds cover his genitals, while a tuft of tall white feathers stick almost vertically up from his centrally parted shock of hair.

The figure’s near-naked body is daubed with white paint to create a series of dots, lines, and rectangles. In his hands are bundles of dry plants that he throws on the fire to create even more thick pungent smoke, which now becomes intoxicating beyond belief.

He is also not alone. As the smoke wafts around the cave in ever-rising waves, it becomes apparent that behind him, a little away from the fire and in the semidarkness, are a dozen or so similar individuals. Males and females are present, and, like him, they are also slightly crouched in their stance. They sway and sing in unison to create the bizarre vocal cacophony that provides the energy necessary for what the central figure is trying to achieve.

His focus is now fixed on concentric rings of stones laid out before him. These are both spherical and polygonal in shape and are about the right size to fit tightly in a human hand. They are light in color and made from limestone. At the center of the circle is another polyhedron, slightly smaller in size and blue-grey in color. This one is made of flint and appears important to this strange ceremony.

As the vocal cacophony intensifies still further, the shaman—for that is what he clearly appears to be—takes hold of a swan’s wing bone and clenches it tightly in one hand. Still dancing rhythmically on the spot, he cries out above the other voices before entering into a trance state and staring into nowhere. He looks to be possessed by some kind of animating spirit that has taken control of his bodily functions, allowing his mind to be elsewhere.

It is what the shaman experiences next that now compels us, for from his body emerges the vision of a magnificent swan that flaps its wings to rise into the air and out through the cave roof. Free at last, his soul spirit is able to fly at will, encircling about the local hills before heading toward the rising full moon and the twin mountains off in the distance.

~~~

This is a fictional account, a confabulation inspired by the discoveries being made right now at one of the most exciting archaeological sites in the world. I speak of the Qesem Cave, near Tel Aviv, in modern-day Israel. There evidence has emerged of extraordinary and quite innovative technological firsts for very early humanity. They include the earliest “canned food,” a unique means of preserving the precious and highly nutritious marrow from inside deer leg bones; the earliest “freezers,” a unique method of using fire ash to store fresh food and animal hides for extended periods of time; the earliest known mass production of precision-made blade tools; the first sustained use of fire within a permanent hearth; the first use of fire to temper and soften stone materials, and the earliest “school of rock,” where pupils were taught the art of stone knapping and tool manufacture.

Perhaps more significantly, from the same cave, comes the earliest evidence anywhere in the world for the existence of shamanistic activities. This realization stems from the discovery of a single swan wing bone sequestered for use in what appears to have been animistic practices. Most obviously, these activities involved an individual, someone whom we might call the First Shaman, adopting the guise of this great white bird to achieve soul flight. The purpose of this action would have been the attainment of otherworldly wisdom from the inhabitants of an invisible realm that, as we shall see, was thought to coexist with the world of the living.

The incredible thing is that the highly talented inhabitants of the Qesem Cave did not belong to one of the archaic human populations that are known to have occupied Africa and the Eurasian continent at this time. Instead, what slim anatomical evidence we have about the Qesem people, as we shall call them, is that they may well constitute the earliest form of pre-dispersal modern humans, the forerunners of anatomical modern humans; that is, Homo sapiens like ourselves.

Since they also appear to have been the earliest known exponents of shamanism and their community suddenly rose to become arguably the most advanced on the planet at this time, this is all strangely coincidental, to say the least, and raises important questions. Were they among the first people in the world to benefit from communications with otherworldly denizens? Did these communications, achieved through shamanistic activities like those described above, start to provide the inspiration that allowed the Qesem people to develop new technologies and formulate ideas on such profound matters as the meaning of life and death, the nature of the soul, and even their connection with the stars?

OF STARS AND STRANGE REALMS

These earliest shamans at places like the Qesem Cave were clearly trying to access higher powers, powers that the ancients would come to terms the gods. Across time complete mythologies developed around these powerful supernatural figures. They could control the violent forces of nature, cause changes in the weather and in the oceans, and even shake the earth itself. Other elements of these mythological traditions reflected ontological and even cosmological beliefs indicating that the earliest ancestors of these prehistoric peoples came from the stars. More disturbingly, our ancestors came to believe that the inhabitants of stars and strange realms could appear as physical beings here, in this world. Sometimes these beings were invisible and seen perhaps only during shifted states of altered states or in dreams, while at other times they could appear in what can only be described as material form.

All this raises some important questions concerning the true source of the knowledge and wisdom that has inspired the rise of civilizations worldwide and the nature of the supernatural beings that have coexisted with humankind for many thousands of years.

How did ancient man come to build Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt? Why exactly were Peru’s Nazca Lines created, and most important of all, why did so many ancient cultures and indigenous peoples come to believe that their earliest ancestors came from the stars? Where did all this knowledge originate? Was it purely a product of random beliefs and ideas accumulated across tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years? Or has there been a slow drip of knowledge coming through to humanity from very real otherworldly intelligences? Is this what our most distant ancestors came to understand themselves? If so, are such intelligences contactable, not just through shamanistic practices but also in the knowledge that certain locations around the globe appear to produce mysterious lights and other strange phenomena on a regular basis? Are these same sites—portals or points of contact, as they might be described—somehow able to trigger transformative experiences in those most in tune with their inherent energies? Have these transformative experiences changed humankind’s spiritual views of life and perhaps even triggered the foundations of major religions, including those of a monotheistic nature?

As Greg Little shows in part one of our new book, Origins of the Gods, all these ideas were common to Native American peoples, right through to the arrival among their tribes and communities of the first European ethnographers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These enlightened Native peoples would have been able to provide suitable answers to all the questions posed here, explaining how much of their knowledge and wisdom came from otherworldly beings—spirits, ancestors, tricksters, and even the somewhat eerie “little people” who bear some semblance to the alien Greys of today. This is where these people said they gained the knowledge that helped inspire not just their natural sciences, which included an understanding of hundreds of different plants and medicines, but also the development of their spiritual worldview. It seems to have been a belief that inspired the creation of unimaginably large earthen mound complexes, many of which are aligned to the sun, moon, and stars.

Greg makes it clear that we ignore at our peril the lessons of these indigenous peoples of the North American continent, since they can provide the key to understanding exactly what our earliest ancestors really did believe about the supernatural world that was thought to surround them at all times. In part two of Origins of the Gods, I provide the earliest evidence of these beliefs, which might well have begun at places like the Qesem Cave in Israel as much as 400,000 years ago.

Moreover, and most important of all, we reveal the true nature of those “ancient aliens” that we all so long to understand. What we find is that their existence is almost certainly linked, not just with entities existing at the very edge of the electromagnetic spectrum, but even with such matters as plasma consciousness, quantum realities, and multidimensionality. This line of investigation, from both Greg and myself, provides us with compelling and quite mystifying evidence for the true origins of the “gods” who are strongly believed to have guided humanity since the beginning.