The Divinity Student and Shamanism

[unknown]

I've been reading a lot of works on shamanism (in between my studies of Celtic spirituality and druidry) and I've found a lot of similarities in Cisco's The Divinity Student. Namely, there seem to be a lot of references to astral travel, out of body experiences, seership, rebirth and Otherworldly experiences (gaining knowledge from Nature and animals).

Any comments?

[The New Nonsense]

I agree. It's a fantastic book. Much like shamanism the character seems to go through stages of transformation and follows a path that only reveals it's direction and meaning through surreal glimpses. The book also incorporates a lot of techniques and themes that are analogous to post-modern magick and chaos magick. Not to mention the huge use of interesting forms of alchemy.

[unknown]

Yay! I wasn't expecting a response haha.

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of magick type stuff going on in it. I wonder if Michael Cisco was aware of this and did it intentionally or not? We need to get him on TLO

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[The New Nonsense]

Speaking of shamanism... I'm currently reading a book called "Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism" by Daniel Pinchbeck. It's a great read, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.

[unknown]

I'll keep an eye out for it. I'm currently reading "The Spiral of Memory & Belonging" by Frank MacEowen, and it deals heavily with shamanism.

[ventriloquist]

I enjoyed "BOTH," although books like this usually lose me once the writer starts taking for granted the idea of alien intelligences waiting for us at the other end of the tryptamine looking glass (or, for that matter, eschatological scenarios derived from reading the I Ching, etc. etc.)

I often think of Michael Persinger, the Canadian scientist who's done a lot of research into "neurotheology." He's been mentioned a few times on TLO before (I think Tom even invoked him in an interview,) but the gist is that he's been able to catalyze intense spiritual experiences and similar responses by disrupting the brain's magnetic field. People feel "presences" they ascribe to Jesus, "Grays" from other galaxies (especially interesting in light of certain DMT trip reports,) ghosts of dead family members, and all manner of other things.

I'm personally inclined to believe that all experiences of "Otherness" are simply perceptions of the shadows of our own minds (I'm also something of a panentheist, so this has other, fuzzier implications to me.)

Even Terence McKenna said on the subject, "We are completely alienated, so alienated from ourselves are we that when we encounter our own souls in the psychedelic dimension, we mistake it for a UFO."

To stay more on the topic, I recommend Joseph Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" if you haven't read it, unknown. It's not specifically about shamanism, but it's a good read and covers a lot of material that's of tangential interest.

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[unknown]

I have heard good things about Joseph Campbell but have not had the time to get around to reading his stuff.

This Michael Persinger person sounds interesting too.

[DeathfareDevil]

I hadn't heard about this Cisco fellow till just the other day, when I stumbled across an ad for The Divinity Student in the back of an anthology called Leviathan (some here may be familiar with that as well -- I wasn't), an ad that boasted a blurb from Ligotti himself: something about a "hallucination mutilated with surgical precision." Needless to say, I'll soon be ordering this book.

And if anyone is interested, this Leviathan collection, found at my library, is very, very good -- weird, dark fantasy; a story by Cisco called, I think, "The Genius of Assassins"; a couple by Michael Moorcock; and a whole lot of others by people with whom I'm completely unfamiliar. Although many here may know the names.

(Actually, it's "volume 3" of this Leviathan series. The link is below.)

Amazon.com: Leviathan Three: Forrest Aguirre, Jeff Vandermeer, Zoran Zivkovic: Books

 

Amazon.com: Leviathan Three: Forrest Aguirre, Jeff Vandermeer, Zoran Zivkovic: Books

And if this collection has been mentioned here before - and it probably has - I apologize for the redundancy.

[unknown]

ah, hadn't heard of that. At any rate, you will be quite pleased with your order. I haven't read the sequel to it yet, though.

[unknown]

ohhhh yeah I have heard of Leviathan Three...nevermind...good authors in there!