There are so many things we reject or condemn simply because we do not understand them. Yet they have their explanations, and this applies with particular force to phenomena we would classify as psychological deviations.
As became clear in the article “The Psychiatric Clinic Through the Eyes of a Shaman,” what in the West we perceive as mental illness is, in Africa, understood as the birth of a shaman. And the inner transformation that opens the senses to the world of the invisible is by no means an easy process. In addition to this, the rejection and misunderstanding of this process—not only by others, but also by the very person who has heard the call of the spirit—can greatly worsen the situation. If, however, the individual manages to meet the challenge, he later becomes one of those who develop the very community that initially rejected him. He becomes a healer of his tribe and an authentic bearer of the living myth-making of which Joseph Campbell writes in the fourth volume of The Masks of God—Creative Mythology.
Shamanism is alive in the contemporary world, though not in the way it existed in the past. It may come in the form of a song that lifts the spirit of a despondent person and heals him through music. All inspiring music has this quality, but at this moment I am thinking of the songs and creative work of Alex Boyé. At other times, it may take the form of transvestism—a desire to exchange one’s gender role for its opposite. Here is what Joseph Campbell writes on this subject.
Transvestite Male Shaman, Hupa, North Coast, California
“In northeastern Siberia, as well as in many parts of North and South America, the shamanic calling includes transvestism. In other words, the individual must live the life of the opposite sex. This means that he or she has gone beyond the powers of the original sex; therefore, such women live as men, and men as women. These transvestite shamans play an extraordinarily important role in the Native American mythology of the Southwest—among the Hopi, Navajo, and Apache tribes—as well as among the Sioux and many others.
Vladimir Bogoraz and Waldemar Jochelson were the first to discover this reversal of gender roles among the Chukchi of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Siberia. These two men witnessed an entire spectrum of reactions to this phenomenon. One of these reactions was that some young men, who had heard the call to become what was called a ‘soft man,’ were so ashamed and negatively disposed that they took their own lives. If the shaman does not respond to the call, he is faced with complete psychological collapse. This is truly a very deep psychological calling.”
— Joseph Campbell, Paths to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation, pp. 18–19
Not every instance of transvestism signifies shamanism. But every instance of transvestism encounters, in one way or another, condemnation and ridicule from society, provoking to varying degrees the rigid views of people who hold established ideas about what is “normal.” In the sixth chapter of the book Tales of the Pilgrim, its author tells the story of the transvestite shaman Don Emilio. In his account of this healer from the indigenous Jívaro tribe, he describes him as a stocky, muscular, and powerful man who at the same time displays feminine modes of behavior—voice, intonation, gestures, gait—and who from time to time dresses as a woman in order to challenge the entrenched habits of perception among the people of his tribe.
Before Don Emilio underwent this reversal, he had a family—he had a wife and children. But after asking himself what his greatest fear was, he heard the answer: to begin dressing and behaving like a woman. For him as a shaman, this meant confronting that which he feared. He decided to accept the challenge and to begin dressing like a woman and behaving like a woman. Such behavior was a shock to his family, and his wife left him. This development, however, is part of the hero’s story and of setting out on untrodden paths. And although Don Emilio’s family left him, the same did not happen with the people of the tribe in which he served as a shaman. His provocative way of life brought even greater vitality and openness into the community in which he lived. He not only freed himself from his fear, but to his gift of healing he added his personal example of courage and an authentic way of life.
The times in which we live have an immense need for the dissolution of old notions of “normality,” for opening space to greater tolerance of difference, and for the intellectual effort to understand these differences from the perspective of what is taking place within the collective unconscious.
Andy and Lana Wasowski
If these differences concern gender roles, for example, this may mean that we are dealing with a historically conditioned dynamic that pushes a person to seek the answer to the most essential question—“Who am I?”—beyond social prescriptions tied to our biological roles. (The successor of Steve Jobs—the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook—recently stated that he is proud to be gay.)
A dynamic that challenges us to expand our understanding of the way creative interaction between Spirit and Nature takes place, because it is precisely the Promethean spirit within us that does not settle for what is naturally given, but seeks to transform and develop it. (Lana Wachowski—one of the Wachowski siblings, the directors of cult films such as The Matrix, V for Vendetta, and Cloud Atlas—became Lana Wachowski after undergoing gender transition.)
A dynamic that also expresses an increased need for wholeness, which on the level of biological sex may even take the image of man–woman. (The Austrian drag singer Conchita Wurst won Eurovision Song Contest 2014.)
Tolerance, open-mindedness, and the capacity to endure the frustration of lacking clear answers are among the most important conditions for bringing about—in a positive way—the changes that the collective unconscious is pressing to realize both within and outside of us. For these changes can also occur in a negative way. Spirit inhabits the world of archetypes, and archetypes always manifest in their duality—in their light and their dark sides. A transvestite does not equal a shaman. Sexual preferences are not equivalent to healing abilities. And vice versa. To become a healer of the community in which one lives, it is not necessary to become a transvestite. It is, however, necessary to challenge one’s fear of others’ judgment, allowing the call of the heart to become more important than the opinion of the community.
Osho writes that a human being has seven bodies, and only the first is natural, connected to matter—coming from it and returning to it. The subsequent bodies belong to the invisible world, and up to and including the fourth they are gender-defined—for women, the second body is male, the third female, and the fourth male again; for men, the order is reversed. He also says that when these bodies merge—a sign of enlightenment—this may manifest as changes even at the level of the first, biological body. He recounts that Ramakrishna, after attaining enlightenment, acquired a female body, developed breasts, and even began to have a monthly cycle.
“His individuality became so feminine that he walked and spoke exactly like a woman.”
— Osho, Kundalini and the Chakras, p. 243
Image from the Rosarium text of MS Ferguson 6: a bird sits atop the sprouting tree and the spirit ascends to the higher spiritual area
I believe that learning how to ask questions is far more valuable than seeking quick and easy answers. And if we manage to ask the right questions, they will lead us to the myths that tell of a time when man and woman were one being—and that being was androgynous. We will arrive at the Garden of Eden before the Fall of Adam and Eve. We will also come to understand the story of Hermaphroditus, told in Metamorphoses* by Ovid, who was transformed into a dual-sexed being by the gods themselves, when they merged him with the nymph Salmacis, who was in love with him. We will also reach the sacred marriage in alchemy, in which the union of the King and the Queen expresses the birth of the Whole personality.
The world is far too complex for us to rush into judgments and superficial conclusions. Behind the façade of normality, as Thomas Moore tells us in his book Care of the Soul, there lie not merely deviations—sometimes labeled perverse—but buried fragments of soul and vivid creative individuality.
“When we come to know the soul and boldly acknowledge its oddities and the many ways in which it manifests in individuals,” he writes, “we can develop a taste for the perverse. We can appreciate its quirks and crookedness. And finally, we can truly realize that individuality is born rather in the eccentricity and unexpected shadowy inclinations of the soul than in normality and conformity. One who cares for the soul has no problem with the unusual and the unexpected.”
In the creative play between matter and Spirit, the boundary between pathology and mental health is dangerously thin. This is why the “pragmatic criterion of truth” can once again help us—even when we do not know the Whole Truth—to retain a moral orientation. And that orientation is the extent to which a given person helps affirm universal human values, harms no one, and even contributes to the prosperity, development, and healing of the community. Lana Wachowski, Don Emilio, and Conchita Wurst not only harm no one, but possess the courage to affirm their difference—to express their creative potential, enrich the world, and challenge the status quo.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
Note: The quotations are translated from Bulgarian and are not presented as verbatim citations.
