The Artist as Enchanter. . .

Restoring Mystery to Our Too-Rational World

by Suzi Gablik

At the edge of a frozen lake, a woman dances herself into a visionary state. She wears an extraordinary garment of raffia and string that transforms her into the supernatural being she is impersonating. Her presence in the landscape is like a numinous symbol of wings and flight, signifying the possibility of transition into another mode of being - - the freedom to change situations, to abolish a petrified or blocked system of conditioning. The woman is Fem Shaffer, a Chicago artist, enacting an empowerment ritual involving the cleansing of crystals in the waters of Lake Michigan at the winter solstice. The temperature is well below zero, and although it is dawn in Chicago, the scene feels ancient.

Shaffer's rituals are the result of a collaboration between herself and photographer Othello Anderson, which began with the intention of marking the passage of the seasonal equinoxes and solstices with special ceremonies. "The significance of what we do is to reenact or remember old ways of healing the earth," Shaffer states. "An ancient rhythm takes over; time does not exist anymore. We perform the rituals to keep the idea alive."

One of the peculiar developments in our Western world is that we are losing our sense of the divine side of life, of the power of imagination, myth, dream and vision. The particular structure of modern consciousness, centered in a rationalizing, abstracting and controlling ego, determines the world we live in and how we perceive and understand it. Without the magical sense of perception, we do not live in a magical world. We no longer have the ability to shift mind-sets and thus to perceive other realities, to move between the worlds, as ancient shamans did. One way to access these worlds is through ritual where something more goes on than meets the eye-something sacred.

For Shaffer, creating a shamanic outfit to wear is like creating a cocoon or alchemical vessel, a contained place within which magical transformation can take place. Magic clothes were often the means whereby shamans passed from one world to the other in order to achieve the necessary communication with the spirits - - perhaps a cap of eagle and owl feathers, or a cloak adorned with ribbons and stuffed snakes. This "sacred wardrobe" acts as a lure for spirits; it serves as the means for accessing alternate states of consciousness - - a traditional means of obtaining knowledge in shamanic cultures.

The most important thing, however, is whether a shift in awareness occurs, creating a point of departure, an opening for a numinous experience that can never be obtained by cultivating intellectual skills: The world of magical perception has to be explored experientially with wholehearted participation of the entire being. Shaffer's experience bears this out. The winter solstice ceremony was held at sunrise in -35 degree weather. The wind chill factor made it -80 degrees. Says Shaffer, "We seem to have gone into another time zone .... I washed the crystals in the Lake, putting my hands in the water. Othello used three cameras; two froze completely and the film in the third camera split. It was very cold and yet Othello and I were not affected by it."

In our culture it is no easy task to accept the validity of "visionary" experiences. The modem personality is much more respectful of the psyche's rational aspects. We have no ceremonies for meeting the gods in a magic circle; the faculties with which we might have joined them have atrophied. Those who want to learn to enter the Dreamtime in order to initiate healing have to find ways of effecting a release of archetypal memory that predates the loss of our integration with nature. But for this, we have to get rid of our arrogance toward the magical, mythological and feminine modes that are unacceptable to rational patriarchal consciousness, a consciousness that only believes in the surface reality. These other models of reality - - vision outside of the ego's control, vision rooted in the soul - - were left behind by the rational and scientific logic of the Enlightenment and need to be reclaimed.

Shaffer believes that if she can recover an experience of "the basic spiritual existence with nature," others might do the same. "It does not matter that I possess no expert training or special knowledge," she says. The important thing is "the ability to open up and channel the intuition of my own self."

Ritual, Shaffer explains, "begins with a feeling, a sense of something that wants to materialize itself. We feel that we are at a loss, there are no guidelines, no instructions, we have to rely on our inner selves for direction. Information appears, an opening of the senses, things start to fall into place, ideas, movements and gestures. Power is emanating from the area, it is like stepping into a source of energy. This energy starts to centralize and condense, it takes a form. A mystical metamorphosis starts to take place."

 

Suzi Gablik is a writer, teacher and lecturer whose books include Magritte and Has Moderism Failed? This article is a partial representation of an article which appeared in Common Boundary, March-April, 1992, which in turn was adapted from The Reenchantment of Art, by Suzi Gablik.

Copyright 1991, Suzi Gablik. The article was reprinted in Common Boundary by permission of Thames and Hudson and is published on this web site with permission from Suzi Gablik.

Photography Copyright ©1991 by Othello Anderson, All Rights Reserved

An Interview with Fern Shaffer

BY SUZI GABLIK

Suzi Gablik: How did you come to believe in the power of ceremony and ritual, and in the magic and power of shamanism?

Fern Shaffer: It goes back to early childhood, when I was seven years old and used to accompany my grandmother to temple. It was a small building and very orthodox. The men and the women were separated, and the men spoke in a foreign language. They wore unusual clothes. It had the feeling of another time, another place, and yet it was familiar. By the time I was in high school, I was reading about the trance healings of Edgar Cayce, and I knew about things like reincarnation. But I couldn't explain them. I had no one to talk with about this, so I kept it all quiet. In the 1970s, I read Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane, so I knew about making a space sacred. Michael Harner's The Way of the Shaman articulated for me what I already knew but couldn't speak. When an opportunity arose to study with him, I jumped at it. In a sense, he gave me permission to use what I knew.

SG: Prayer is a large component of the rituals you do. What kind of prayers do you offer?

FS: I basically try to inspire the earth to interact with what I'm asking for. When we went to Effigy Mounds in McGregor, Iowa, to work with the eagle spirits, I yelled at them. I told them to wake up. I told them that they were needed. I stamped on the ground, enticing them to come out. Another form of prayer is where I will go into an area of devastation and show kindness and humility. The idea is to tread lightly. There's no stamping or carrying on in the urban scenes, for instance. This is very delicate light work.

SG: It has been said that to be effective, a ritual must contain four elements: a clearly stated purpose; a sacred place to perform the ritual; a faith in the mysterious and a receptiveness to the divine; and the incorporation of the tradition of our ancestors. What gives your work the spiritual spark, so that you are not just going through the motions?

FS:The intention. My intention is to bring a spiritual presence back to the place for which I'm offering prayers. I believe in working with the universe. I believe that if you open up to it, it will respond and hear you.

SG: The physician and writer Larry Dossey has reported on some prayer experiments conducted by a cardiologist, Randolph C. Byrd, and documented in the July 1988 issue of Southern Medical Journal. Among almost 400 patients admitted to the coronary care unit at San Francisco General Hospital, approximately half were treated with standard medical care, while the other half was given the same care, but was also prayed for. Neither the patients nor the staff knew which group was receiving the prayers. The study showed that the prayed-for patients did better in several statistically significant ways.

FS: I'm familiar with the experiments Dossey talks about, and I certainly feel that my energy and focus usually generate some activity in those areas that I've gone to. The whole earth is interconnected by ley lines and magnetic energy fields. What I try to do is to tap into this energy - - it's a bit like applying acupressure to the earth's body. I apply a particular kind of intensity to the area I am praying for. We went to Effigy Mounds to stop the encroachment of local farmers wanting to take over the Indian burial grounds, and as far as I know, there hasn't been any further encroachment for three years. Of course, we don't really know the reason for this. In August 1988, after the devastating fires swept across the West we went into a forest in Glenview, Illinois, with a hundred pounds of corn meal, which we scattered as a symbolic gesture to help stop the fires ceremonially and encourage reforestation. It was a gesture intended to stimulate nature to do its own healing.

---

Back to Back to The Hearth | Green St Gallery | The Street People