Joseph Campbell, in his lifelong exploration of our planet’s mythology came to believe that shamans were the first artists, the first musicians, and the first storytellers. He also discovered the drum as one of the core instruments in many varieties of shamanism, appearing in the most ancient of traditions. It is then reasonable to speculate shamans were the first drummers as well. The global predominance of the drum seems to support this belief. Michael Harner summarized his study of global methods of consciousness alteration by stating that throughout most of the world the altered states of consciousness used in shamanism are attained through techniques involving a monotonous percussive sound, most typically done with a drum, but also with sticks, rattles, and other instruments.

I have been reading Michael Harner’s book The Way of the Shaman, his personal guide to shamanic practice. His book is part ethnography (Harner spent considerable time with the Jivarro people of Peru) as well as excercises and his own accounts and of people he worked with. I try to embody a healthy amount of skepticism, but I must say Harner exemplifies a deep integrity and empathy, encouraging shamanic practice on a transpersonal level; something that must be experienced (and repeated and built upon) in a meaningful way.

His first experiential exercise he calls, ‘First Journey’, he writes, “this will be a simple journey of exploration down through the Tunnel into the Lowerworld. Your only mission will be to traverse the Tunnel, perhaps see what lies beyond, and then return.” He is very sincere in his instructions and I felt comfortable experimenting for myself. After all, I am an artist. My interest in shamanism has been steadily growing and I felt it was time to step it up and see for myself the possibilities of my own experience. Harner’s instructions were very specific: to carry out the exercise I will need a drum. Out at my family beach house at the coast (I had inconveniently forgot all my drums were in storage in Portland). Not a good start, but Harner says you could use a CD of shamanic drumming or even someone tapping a tablespoon on hardcover book next to your head! He admitted this was less than optimal, and I agreed. However, in the garage I did find a five-gallon bucket with a remarkable tone to it. I jerry-rigged a mallet using a piece of driftwood and a cloth to make a “drum.” You wouldn’t see this in the American Museum of Natural History, but Harner assured me it was the sound that really counted. Beggars can’t be choosers and I definitely considered my solution a step up from a spoon.

 Why is the drum such a powerful tool for entering into shamanic states of consciousness?

The drum acts as a focusing device, similar to the approach of various meditation techniques in other traditions where one strives to focus the mind on a specific point, quieting distracting thoughts and energies, keeping the mind anchored to a linear consciousness. The elimination of distracting thoughts is the first stepping-stone toward allowing the consciousness to open to higher states of awareness.

 Once the drum sounds, the energies and attentions of the spirits hone in.

In the shamanic traditions, as mentioned before, the drum is often referred to as a vessel the shaman rides into other realms. (See Siberian traditions, Lapp drums, spiritual flight, association with birds etc.) Phrases such as the shaman “rides his drum like a horse” are found throughout the accounts of shamanic trance journeying experience. The single focus on the pure sound of the drum is the aiding meditation vessel transporting the shaman’s spirit into non-ordinary realities. Above and beyond its use as a musical instrument the drum is considered sacred, and possessed of powers its own right. The instrument is often empowered through ritualistic practices that charge it with powerful energetic intent. This often includes the materials of the drum, such as a specific tree for the frame and animal for the hide. Such a drum becomes a potent tool for healing, and like all tools of power, must be earned and treated with restraint and respect. The drum is an energy form—a living being, derived from beings, working with the shaman to increase his or her power and effectiveness. Such a drum can invoke spirits, fight illness (and demonic forces often associated with illness) and many influence many other forces.

On a physiological level, a more scientific explanation is that drumming stimulates the auditory tracts that pass directly into the reticular activating system (RAS) of the brain. The RAS regulates the general level of electrical activity in the brain. Through a phenomenon known as auditory driving, the sound of drumming creates strong, repetitive neuronal firing in the auditory pathways. Prolonged listening to such sounds serves to overcharge the RAS in a unique way that can greatly reduce, or entirely block out, other sensory stimuli. This being said, I wasn’t particularly thrilled about my plastic bucket, but I kept my spirits high.

Next, for the journey Harner instructs to avoid psychedelic or alcoholic substances for at least 24 hours prior to the journey, so that “your centeredness and power of concentration will be good”, he further writes to eat lightly or not at all during the preceding four hours. Choose a dark and quiet room (which was convenient here on the Oregon Coast) and to lie comfortably on the floor, without a pillow, in loose clothing. Take a few deep breaths, relaxing your arms and legs. Lie there a few minutes and contemplate your forthcoming journey…You are then to visualize an opening in the earth. Any hole will do, even a man-made one. The right opening will be one that feels comfortable to you. Spend some time seeing the hole without entering it. “Note its details clearly.”

I was now desperate to decide my hole. Since I had just returned from eastern Oregon, two different holes were present in my minds eye: one was the hot springs at Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge (which seemed very mystical and fitting) the other was a crack in the rock along a canyon by the Deschuttes river on a family property in Tumolo, Oregon. The tight little crack had natural rock steps, which we used to get lower down the canyon to a trail about twenty feet below, my family had used it to get down to the river trail my whole life, and my dad had used it before me as a kid, but I wasn’t sure if it counted, since it really didn’t go down into the earth per se, but just to a lower part of the rock canyon. This would prove to be an interesting dilemma.

Next, you need an assistant to play the drum. Luckily, my girlfriend Anne was with me, and being a musician herself seemed proficient to the play the part. The drum must be played in a monotonous, rapid frequency of ca. 205-220 beats per minute (which is usually the most effective, Harner writes). At the start of the drumming, put your arm over your eyes to block out any remaining light. The drumming continues for approximately 10 minutes. When the drumming begins, visualize your hole and enter it. Harner then writes:

“Go down through your Tunnel. At first the Tunnel may be dark and dim. It  usually goes underground at a slight angle, but occasionally it descends steeply. The Tunnel sometimes appears ribbed, and often it bends. Occasionally one passes through the Tunnel so fast it is not even seen…At the end of the Tunnel you will emerge out of doors. Examine the landscape in detail, travel through it,     and remember its features. Explore until you are signaled to come back, and then return up through the Tunnel the same way you went down. Do not bring anything back with you. This is only an exploratory journey.”

The signal by the drummer is four sharp cracks on the drum (or bucket) followed by thirty seconds of very rapid beats followed by another four hits, signaling the final return where you are to sit up and open your eyes. Harner says, “Do not be discouraged if you do not succeed the first time.” Fair enough.

So, Anne begins drumming. Since, this is her first time she wavers a little bit in the beat and finding the “sweet spot” of the bucket, but finally gets going; meanwhile, I am wavering between holes in the ground. I forget what I’m supposed to do; do I enter and imagine a tunnel? Or is a tunnel supposed to come to me? I am apprehensive about the whole thing. Do I free-associate and create my experience in mind? I was under the impression that part of the ‘altered state’ is you receive visions and participate, not merely create. Yet, I relaxed and tried to get into the swing of things. Like my experience with meditation, yoga, or mountain climbing visions come when you are not consciously thinking—suddenly things move into view that weren’t there before. I felt little twinges of an altered state, probably about 5-8 minutes in. And I suddenly began to see dim, hazy pictures of what looked like, or could be a tunnel. Except it wasn’t going down in the earth but seemed to be going straight up like a ribbed cone. And I couldn’t tell which hole, the hot spring or the rock crack, the cone was coming from. Soon enough, Anne banged the four hits marking my return, from, well, nowhere in particular.

I wasn’t disappointed, rather just contemplative on the fact that I would have to try it again some other night and that the experiment was worthwhile, all the same. Yet, there was that moment about ¾ of the way through where things seemed to be happening, though I couldn’t really put a mental finger on it at the time (or fully turn off my quantifying mentality, analyzing the experience).

It wasn’t a total loss; Anne had a great time and even said she was having her own visions of a stenciled moose. I immediately suggested she lie down and I pick up the bucket (I am a drummer after all!) and I thought pretty highly of my ability to get the spirits going with my turn on the bucket. Sure enough, Anne’s experience was a phantasmagoric scene of morphing deer, a mermaid on a swing with a wolf which then turned into grass, a vivid square tunnel, diamond paneling which turned into elephants, a giant bat…she obviously has a more active imagination.

I was perplexed and wondering if she hadn’t taken something special for the occasion; but knowing her (she can’t even finish a glass of wine) I knew she just had a fortunate brain chemistry for this sort of thing. Yet, in her recollection (which we recorded immediately after the session) nothing she described concretely fit the ‘journey to the Lowerworld exercise, but was more of a ‘journey to the fantasy playground’—nevertheless, I consider her experience a valid ‘shamanic’ one in this context, even if we didn’t completely understand it.

Anne’s successful experience, and my own time concentrating with the drum, seemed to lighten my mood and energy and Anne asked if I’d like to try again. Mermaids on a swing with a wolf, I’m in! I then confessed I couldn’t even decide on the hole and we talked about it. This (second) time I would stick with the hot spring (for I knew this hole went deep in the earth). I relaxed, took a few deep breaths as the drum began.

Below are my recorded notes and drawings immediately following my experience:

“It took awhile…but I imagined the hot spring, and I kept imagining it and then I saw the kind of ribbed thing again, but it was like a cone, and it was sort of like the inside of a worm, and it was kind of dark, but I (it) didn’t feel like it was going down, I felt like it was going up. So I was confused, I didn’t feel like I was [looking] going down in the earth, I felt like I was going up into this cylinder, and then eventually I was going in it, but it wasn’t real quick, it was taking a long time, and there was this thing with me. It wasn’t a clear picture but it was definitely something, there, and it was to my left and it was swimming with me, and I’ll have to draw you a picture, it was like a long, gangly, monkey-like thing with black and white stripes, and had an angler (fish-like) kind of face, and it had these porcupine hair things coming off its head and neck, and it wasn’t good. It was something with me that wasn’t necessarily bad but it was something that was tagging along for the ride but wasn’t invited.

And this all took awhile, because at first I was in the tunnel and then I came up (or down?) again and was at the Hart Mountain area (where the hot springs are located) and I knew that wasn’t it, because it was a memory. Then I finally went in it (the tunnel) and came out and it looked like the African savanna. And it was just the real dry yellow grass, and one of those trees, one of those scraggily, low trees that kind of come up and then go out with a flat bottom (of the canopy), and there was nothing else around, there were just some rocks and I was there for a long time and I wasn’t really exploring much else, there wasn’t much else and I just kept seeing this hazy picture of this stuff and eventually I picked up a rock and I dug around in the dirt, it was just all dry, brown dirt, and I kept thinking, ‘god, I got some problems if this is my place’ (referring to the landscape of the lower world), this isn’t good at all, there’s nothing here, this isn’t some paradise, it’s a wasteland, (and I thought) ‘I need to go to a shaman, I need to find a shaman and take care of this, because I can’t do this (meaning the journey) ‘I need to see a shaman’ and then someone appeared, I couldn’t make out the face, but it was a human and they said “take my hand” and it was like I was a child, looking up at the side and shoulder and head of a large man looking down at me, and I couldn’t totally make it out. You know, it’s like a dream, but I mean, he looked like an Indian! But I don’t want say that because I could be just making that up, nothing was concrete, it was like a dream! But he was there and I distinctly heard in my inner mind “take my hand.” I didn’t hear a voice, just something said “take my hand” and I don’t remember actually taking a hand or anything but all of a sudden I was in a forest, what looked like the redwoods of California, and then I saw a tree, like one of those redwood trees with the holes (at the base) and I went in it and then there was the ‘tube’ again (referring to the cone, concentric tunnel) and from the forest experience to the hole in the tree this whole sensation went over my body, like something I can’t describe, but something quite unique, I felt it come up through my whole body (from my legs to my torso) and I felt like I was in a changed place. So I went to the redwood tree and then I went through the tunnel real quick, and all of a sudden I was in a jungle. I was in this thick, dense jungle, you know, and I felt how thick it was, and there were sounds, I mean I wasn’t really hearing sounds but I felt, like, the sensation, like it was there, like a memory, like it was being replicated for me right there, and I couldn’t make out any animals or anything but there were some sort of things around me, like little fluorescent eyes or something. I didn’t see eyes, but I felt there were some things (beings) around me and they were laughing! [Not at me] It was like a good kind of laughter, and I felt like I was laughing too, just a lot of laughter [but internally] and then I remembered the first thing that was with me, in the first tunnel, and then something said “don’t think about that,” just be here in the jungle, in the forest. So I didn’t think about that. So I was there in the jungle, and I didn’t see a big jungle, but I just felt a jungle. I felt that soundscape and a denseness, that’s what it was. It was like the feeling you get when you walk into a real humid, dense room, and all of a sudden your whole body relaxes and you get this rush. It swelled up from my toes to the crown of my head and I felt the presence of all these forest beings and they were so happy I was there and I felt their joy. And then when you [Anne] did the return, I had to make sure I went back up the first tunnel, and then I saw a flash of the desolate place (referring to the savanna) and then get out the second tunnel. I didn’t just want to get up immediately, or I didn’t want to or I didn’t feel like it would be right, I had to make my return. Three different landscapes, three different levels; the first didn’t seem like it was ‘bad’ there was just nothing there and I was there for a long time and I was just sitting thinking ‘this is where I wound up, so I should stay here’ and then I started feeling bad or antsy because I thought that thing that was with me [at first in the tunnel] might have been my demon, or a demon.”

I do not claim with any certainty that my experience was a ‘shamanic journey’ and that any of what I experienced is relatable to the work and experience of traditional shaman. Rather, it is just an experience, and a transpersonal experience at that. Though, it brings intriguing insight, for me, into this world, which as a composer and storyteller am naturally drawn to, just as I am naturally drawn to the myths and sounds of nature. The origins, the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of this experience remain elusive, but my account is certainly authentic; I did experience this and it did feel profound.

Special thanks to Anne for drumming and experimenting (she’s a pretty good drummer after all!). Later on I came across Michael Drakes The Shamanic Drum: A Guide to Sacred Drumming, where he writes: “A five gallon bucket…makes an excellent improvised drum.” Maybe I’m a natural after all.

Bottom of the page: Depiction of the barren “savanna”: Top corners of page: The first and second tunnels. 1^st was quite long, where I was traveling with the entity swirling beside me (center). As I described above it was more like a cylindrical cone pointing up then a tunnel, yet at the same time it seemed sort of like the inside of a worm—dim and dark, but with hues of red, brown, black. Note its similarity to the rock art above (which I had not previously studied or contemplated as a ‘tunnel’). Second was near instant traverse and seemed straight (as I noted the second one did not feel like it was traversing up).

 

Below: Brief scene in the redwoods, which zeroed in on a hole at the base of tree. Top left corner: Not entirely accurate, but representative, drawing of the very brief encounter with a figure and jungle at bottom center.

I couldn’t help but relate my experience to my recent journey documenting the petroglyph site near Hart Mountain, notably the concentric circle or “tunnel” image. Below we see a cruder (and unfortunately bullet riddled), but nonetheless, a clear example of the concentric circle, accompanied by shamanic images (signified by figures with antlers on either side of the circle) as well as the wavy, zig-zag lines, characteristic of other rock art around the world and connected, as well, to shamanic visions of others worlds.

These images depict more wavy, zig-zag lines, as well as bizarre beings. Graham Hancock writes in his convincing comparative study of hallucinogenic and trance experience, “In South Africa, I have seen stunning rock paintings of beings that are half man, half preying mantis. In Tanzania, there are weird, otherworldly images of human bodies with insect heads, including “feelers”and eyes on stalks.”One need not travel to the savannas of Africa, right here in Oregon we have such images, such as this close up of one of the ‘beings’:

        

A German linguistics expert named Wilhelm Bleek anticipated the annihilation of the San bushmen as early as the 1870s. He interviewed some of the last San tribesmen and shaman, recording their way of life before it disappeared. His hand written notes and transcripts remained hidden in South African archives until scientist David Lewis-Williams re-discovered them nearly a century later. The San were remarkably clear about the beautiful and mysterious rock paintings of their ancestors. They revealed that the paintings were the work of shamans, whose role was to travel into the spirit world and negotiate with its inhabitants on behalf of their fellow bushmen. On their terrifying psychic voyages, these shamans were accompanied by spirit guides who appeared to them in animal form and taught them to heal the sick, influence the weather, control the movement of animals and so on.

Intriguingly, the San described how the shamans entered the otherworld by means of an arduous and exhausting form of dance. Lewis-Williams realized that this would have led to extreme dehydration and hyperventilation – exactly the physical conditions that could propel them into an hallucinatory trance. When they returned from these out-of-body journeys, the shamans informed the community about what they had learnt and painted some of the strange beings and scenes they had encountered. Hence the existence of their rock art.

Cultures throughout the world have exhibited many similarities in the practices and journeying of traditional shamans. Glyphs from California to Siberia are strikingly similar. Whether this is a product of ‘diffusion’, or the migration of these peoples over millennia (which is certainly the case) or the result of similar biopsychosocial (to use the term by shaman scientist Michael Winkelman) phenomena universal to the human condition remains to be perennial debated, along with much of the research and personal account documented here. Yet, as Harner states, the phenomena persists, because it works and has persisted so long.

Images of bighorn sheep and figures from Coso canyon, near Death Valley, in southeastern California. Note the concentric circled heads, similar to the Hart Mountain glyphs.

                 

Left: “The Sorcerer” of La Trois Frere, France. Thought to be a depiction of a shaman figure, ca. 17,000 years ago. Right: Drawings of documented rock art from the Lake Baikal region of Siberia (note the many ‘shaman’ figures with antlers, which are likely representations of beings in other worlds, replicated by the shaman wearing his mask).