We often forget that longest period of human religiosity is the Paleolithic era. We forget too that many of our most basal religious themes and motifs come from this period. Concepts such as shamanism, the shaman's journey, the center of the world, the axis mundi, the division of labor by sex, the significance of fire-light, the solidarity between humans and animals, the connection of women to the earth, and the cyclical nature of birth and death all may be traced to this very long time period (500,000 - 12,000 B.C.E.). These themes have and do remain central to religious traditions today, even if in highly revalorized forms.

Robert Ryan's "The Strong Eye of Shamanism" is both a call to remind us of this central fact and to show how these religious ideas have remained alive in a wide variety of cultures from around the world. This is not a beginners book, but one for students and teachers of religion and history who already have some knowledge base in the area of pre-historic religiosity. That being said, I would say too that "Strong Eye of Shamanism"is an excellent read, one that kept me enthralled and engrossed in the material.

Current scholarship suggests that shamanism was the earliest form of human religiosity and that shamans were the first religious specialists. Central to shamanism is the shamanic journey. This journey motif, with the plethora of images associated with it, form the basis for further historical developments in the notions of spiritual path, pilgrimage, the epic journey, and spiritual discipline. This mystical itinerary follows a pattern of a descent into darkness, a cave, or a portal to the other-world, a perilous journey through a "narrow gate" or passage that requires the surrender of the candidate and in the process of surrender changes and opens him/her to the power of the transcendent. In this womb of earth or darkness experiential images of ascent, the world tree as the center of the world and mode of transversing the worlds is found. Notions of magical flight or avian transformation are often a part of this process. Images of death, often through dismemberment or piercing, and sacrifice are central. These represent the death of an old way of knowing or seeing that must happen before the light of new awareness can dawn. Final stages include this transformation of consciousness through the experience of the transcendence of opposites. Often this unification of opposites is experienced in sexual terms. Here in the unity of opposites is found to be the source of creativity and of life.

Mr. Ryan starts us on our journey by taking us through the late Paleolithic caves of southern France and northern Spain. He brilliantly analyzes the art work on these cave walls in terms of their religious meaning. We are oriented to the basic images found there, and then introduced to these images as they have been and currently are understood and practiced by primal peoples. Impressively, he moves us through a wide variety of South American cultures and of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. He uses the recurrent patterns of meaning found here to give voice to the silence of the Paleolithic cave paintings. He ties past to present in a seamless way. The results are impressive.

As a reader who is very interested in this area, I was somewhat disappointed by Mr. Ryan not spending more time with looking at how these images have manifested themselves in the historical period. I do understand that would be a least one other book, and I would have liked to see him wrap up his conclusion a little more thoughtfully. For a book that kept me so engrossed, I was disappointed with the ending. The book just stopped without any real summary or implications. These minor points should not deter those who wish to further investigate Paleolithic religiosity and the origins of the journey motif from reading "The Strong Eye of Shamanism."

review ©Tom Collins and RSiSS 2000

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