THE SHAMANIC CHRIST, SAINTS & SHAMANS OR PAGAN-CHRISTIAN FUSIONS
David Allen Stringer - 11.21.2004

It has been commonly supposed by "superiority-minded" & narrow, orthodox Christian dogmatists that all of the previous 'pagan' religions they replaced as dominant were something totally different from & inferior to themselves, as was their idea of "Good" as opposed to "Evil". I will not here be tempted to deviate from the main theme of this article by entering into the tangled theological labyrinth that has grown around such questions, except to say that, objectively speaking, we can say that there are karmically "beneficial" and "harmful" feelings, thoughts and actions, though whether or not this proves the existence of a counter-God of Evil or 'original sin' must remain in the realm of unproven speculation! Such an interpretation of the history of beliefs could not be further from the truth - - though I would assert that the Christian teachings of forgiveness and reconciliation mark a definite ethical improvement on the taught morals of many other creeds and cults, of both earlier and later origin, as the only way to delete that word 'enemy' from our psyches forever, even though many 'so called Christians' still fail to live up to these teachings, by acting revengefully as in war, still controlled by their lower, un-purified, emotional natures!

Indeed, one might say that the Christian Mysteries are simply a further ethical evolution of pre-Christian spiritual practices, both personal and collective or ritual, including the both the humanistic and metaphysical teachings of the pre-BC Hellenic philosophers such as Democritus, Socrates & Plato etc.

The word 'Pagan' (like the word 'foreign' which means anything or anyone not of one's own country - hence a strictly 'relative' rather than an 'absolute' term) has no specific religious significance whatsoever, except in modern parlance amongst often expressly anti-Christian Goddess cultists & such. The Latin Paganus means no more or less than 'of the countryside' being the root of such French words as paysant (peasant), pays (country) and paysage (landscape). It tells us that the older, religious allegiances survived far longer in the Mother-Nature based and ancient-rooted rural communities of Europe, with their uninterrupted continuity of lifestyles than in the larger-scale, alienated & 'industrialised' big cities of the urban-dominated areas where uprooted, often cosmopolitan populations were more in need of and thereby open to newer forms of "salvation" in their times of misery. The greater the city, the more likely, like Rome, Athens or Constantinople, it was to be predominantly 'Christian', though the Churches often vied with similar 'rival' cults such as that of the ancient Egyptian Isis or Mithras, the Bull of Asia Minor.

Prior to the Emperor Constantine capturing Rome by dint of the local Christians opening the City Gates to his army in exchange for his promises of dominance and making Christianity the official State religion of the Empire in 300 AD, the Imperium Romanum was a chaotic global market place in which every religious and spiritual idea under the sun could be found side by side. Even 'rival cults' took ideas from each other even when they competed for attention. Perhaps the Arabia of Mohamed was a similar scenario, for the "Islamic fusion" to come into being?

Many of the older, "pre-Christian" traditions have survived to this day, 1700 years after, in some more isolated rural parts of Europe, if only as folk-lore in spite of much persistent persecution & conflict between the "more primitive forms of paganism" (some involving blood-sacrifices and war-Gods) and those Christians who asserted that their way was the "the only way to know God" which tended to make them as war-like and belligerent as the barbarians or others they opposed, like the Pope's agent - the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne whose method of combating 'paganism' was to burn down its sacred groves in Germany, slaughtering the priests and priestesses of Woden etc - or the later Crusaders against Islam in the Holy Land as against the 'heretical' Cathar Christians of the Languedoc of France in 1200-50! We can see from these above examples, that the consequences of that false historical paradigm that new fundamentalist religions (both Christian & Islamic) are here to replace all previous "inferior" forms of faith can be nothing but never ending cycles of violence, polluting the spiritual essence of all faiths with earthly power-politics!

It is ironical that Western Catholic Christian orthodoxy with its idea of the blood-sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross saving us from our sins derived this myth from the more primitive blood-sacrifice cults it was supposed to replace than the advanced Essene & Gnostic ethics of non-violence of Jesus himself and the original early Christians (The Essenes became the Jewish followers while the Gnostics take their name from early non-Jewish, mainly Graeco-Egyptian followers in Alexandria). This "blood-sacrifice" idea is an unwitting pollution of the pure teachings of Jesus that had evolved from ancient old Testament Judaism, as a later attempt to try to understand why such a good man as Jesus should have been crucified (whether or not he rose from the dead!) once its political motivations had been forgotten - and became popular during the times of State persecution of the Christ-cult as a post-rationalised idea of 'martyrdom' whereby one even benefited from being killed for one's faith, so becoming more like Jesus had been!

This has the logic of a "video-nasty" when what Christ came to teach was peace, love & beatitude! I do personally hold to the view that the Christ-Spirit in Jesus did transcend and triumph over physical death on the Cross to demonstrate to us "the way and the truth" of our Higher Spiritual Natures.

In the same way, the purer, more mystical & spiritualist forms of Christianity are very much derivative from previous mystical mystery teachings in the tradition of shamanic initiations into other realms and planes of Spirit and spirits, such as those of the ancient Egyptian Isis-Osiris, the Hellenic Orpheus and the "Holy Grail" of the Western Celts and others, such as are basically an ancient universal "cosmological science" of the Laws of birth-death-rebirth in reincarnation. The Hellenic Orpheus has the magic keys in the music of his harp to enter the under-world (the lower astral planes of disembodied being) and return to this sensually manifest sphere. Similar, the initiated Hopi Indian shamanic medicine man can enter via the underground kivas the realms of the Kachina Spirit guides and return with their Wisdom.

Jesus Christ likewise has the keys to "the other-world" being also a Master of Spirit-Body Astral Travel ("Shamanic flight") & earthly materialisation & dematerialisation, as witness the events in the New Testament that follow after the account of the crucifixion. These teachings and laws take their most complete form in the ancient Egyptian records, with detailed accounts, in

The Book of the Dead (cf The Tibetan Book of the Dead) of all the gateways or pylons a soul must go through after physical death for judgement (assessment) and purification prior to re-incarnation in new baby body. It is these Egyptian sources that provided many ideas of "Christ as judge at the day of judgement" taken from the Egyptian spirit-priest guardian Thoth, even as the belief in his resurrection was backed by the older idea of the rebirth through Isis of Osiris, the sun-fertility God, as Horus. Many Isians in Egypt, recognizing a common comprehension of the mysteries would have joined the Jewish Essenes & Greek Gnostics in Egypt, even as three River Niles make a confluence as one River, so to create the first Christian fusion.

Enriching this fusion further, the advanced ethical teachings of Christianity are likewise derived from the advanced ethics evolved in earlier Hindu Vedic, Iranian Zoroastrian & Himalayan Buddhist teachings. Essene spirituality is supposed, indeed, to go as far back as Enoch in the world before Noah's Flood.

In conclusion, all these three distinct forms of religious practice have continued in the different aspects of modern religions, each of which has its own idea of martyrdom or self-sacrifice, as well as, in their purest forms (like Sufism in Islam or The Essene-Gnostic heritage in Christianity or Jainism in Hinduism) our highest possible universalist spiritual-ethical aspirations, so that we cannot "draw lines in time across history" and say that around these dates, this religion replaced that as the ruling social force!

An Essene-Gnostic Christian can have far more in common with an ecstatic shaman, Sufi Mystic, Jaina Saint, Buddhist boddisattva or Taoist Zen-master than with many fellows who call themselves 'Christian' yet whose religion manifests the primitive & lower-consciousness paradigms of blood sacrifice and religious "atavism" (or blind attachment) that have replaced older tribalisms. This might explain why the most advanced and vital teachings of Christ such as those of 'forgiveness' and 'turning the other cheek' have not actually been put into practice by the majority of people who call themselves Christians or why so many Israelis still take no notice of Moses's commandment - "Thou shalt not kill" which stands in total contradiction to their usual interpretation of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" in Leviticus, which latter "moral of vengeance" (so agonisingly manifest in modern Israel-Palestine) seems to have more to do with some ancient tradition of the tribal blood-feud current at the time when the first fusions of Judaism took place.

The origins in this in Islam could be similar & nothing to do with a Mohamed's higher, more advanced philosophical-ethical vision! This indicates that any differentiation should not be between different "ideologically defined" faiths, but between the levels of spiritual attainment and self-realisation of individual beings across the board, in several faiths, paths and traditions (including so called "Pagan"). Set, written-down and doctrinally detailed religions can, in fact, impede our upward spiritual-ethical progress rather than assist it, by fixing "in tablets of stone" such harmful ideological impurities from the past or delusory speculations that might, by themselves, have died out naturally as unviable, in the course of time, even when such religionists are motivated by their desire to 'improve' of our standards! Consciousness shoots, grows, blossoms & fruits nourished by questions rather than set answers!

THE SAINT AS SHAMAN or SHAMAN AS SAINT

The Shaman/Shamanka is one who has the Soul-Key whereby humanity can link up with and speak with the Cosmic Creator Spirit - or see it manifest. In modern, secular times, he or she are most likely to fulfil this role through the arts, especially through poetry, music or painting, for lack of an extant religious ritual context in society. The profound, historic impact of Jesus Christ lies in the fact that not only was he an advanced ethical-spiritual teacher (as indeed were such philosopher-teachers as Plato & Socrates) but that he was, at the same time, the Supreme Shaman and spirit-healer, a way, a door through which our Consciousness could pass to see and commune with the realm of the disembodied and Eternal Spirit-Guides beyond who can, like Orpheus pass easily between the two worlds which is a veil and yet to most of us seems as impenetrable as an infinite solid wall! In this He has much in common with the mythology of the "Pagan" Nordic Odin who hung 'crucified' on a tree for 9 days prior to his rebirth.

In this the numbers 3 and 9 (=3 times 3) are not as such references to physical time as Qabalistic magical numbers - 3(00) is the sacred number of the flow of the energy of spirit from the Godhead while 9 (900) is the sacred number of the supreme female (pro-) creative & spiritual power of the Earth-Mother.

It appears that the Hebrew-Chaldean Qabalah & the Nordic Runes share a common sacred numerology.

This suggests to me that the core of Christian ethics is really a spirit-purified shamanism - its shamans being its saints and exemplars.
To put this is in a sociological context, taking Celtic Britain as an example that could be applied to other tribal areas of Europe such as the Slavonic East beyond the boundaries of centralised Empires, the saint (man or woman) fulfilled the role of the shamanic medicine man as intermediary with the Gods (God), spiritual guide, guardian of wisdom, doctor and healer, in self-less service, as can be seen from reading most of the historic lives of Saints, thus manifesting, in smaller ways, the more Universal role of Christ, the primary initiator - thus, societies evolved from pre-Christian to Christian, without any major structural changes, as easily as a flowing river takes on a new name & nature when joined by another influencing stream. The earliest "Saints" from local ethnic cultures may well have been "Shamans & Shamankas" who felt inspired by the ethical ideals as taught by Jesus Christ. My own spiritual path to Essene-Gnostic Christianity took me, after I had rejected all formally defined dogmas in youth, through a series of shamanic experiences and initiations as the way to my current comprehension of these things which has not yet ceased to evolve further, doing so a little every time I dwell on such themes! The Tunga Siberian word "shaman" means "one who knows", exactly the same thing as the early Christian Greek "Gnostic".

The residue of this ancient role has been the power of the priesthood (albeit, often, without their spirituality) as an institution in the Middle Ages, a position of privilege totally misunderstood by the "anti-Catholic" anti-clerical protestants of the European Reformation. The status of these early 'priests' was never one of worldly power so much as spiritual attainment & self-realisation through service to the divinity as to their fellow humans and animals (early Christians, as were the Essenes, were vegetarian) which won them respect and naturally drew others to them. Worldly power only became an aspect of the priesthood by default when there was a vacuum left by lack of priestly spiritual attainment (for example just compare the beatific saintliness of Saint Francis of Assisi with the general corruption in the contemporary Roman Catholic Church - or as many said of Jesus, the Rabbi, though he had no worldly power - "he speaks with authority" (read - integrity, authenticity?). The original idea of theocracy was of a world ruled by the Laws of the Creator, not an oligarchy controlled by a corrupted & dogmatic Church hierarchy using political force and guile, even as the advanced medicine men and women of, for example, a native American tribe constituted their councils of guiding tribal elders & adjudicators - - who better to be such a guardian than the Saint-Shaman who could comprehend the logos of the Spirit realm better than any ordinary mortal, as well as be experienced in the ways of the practical world, whose consciousness could encompass both the intuitions of the right-hand-brain and the rational, organising intellectual comprehension of the left-hand brain. Such people are rare - imagine a combination, in one person, of both a Merlin and a King-Arthur.

Jesus himself was such a shaman-chieftain, priest-king combination for as well as being a Holy Man, he was also the well-aware heir to the throne of the House of Israel, descendant of the Kings David & Solomon. He felt the responsibility of needing to apply all mystical ideals & dreams to all earthly living and daily life-style - of envisioning a Kingdom not based on force or arms or imposed laws, but ruled from within all of us by enlightened conscience, a revolutionary ideal which is beyond the visions of even many modern radicals and reformers of this 21st century.

The Shaman/shamanka goes out into the wilderness alone to be tested by the Great or Holy Spirit with which he or she communes till receiving those visions from Spirit which must be taken back to be shared with the rest of the tribe. This shamanic path has led some to, like Jesus Christ or the prophet Zarathusdra in Iran beyond the usual lessons and messages from Spirit to such transcendent visions that need to be shared with not just one tribe or nation but all of humanity, as it coincides with the Biblical account of the "Temptations of Christ" in the Wilderness of Judaea or Buddha's withdrawal into Meditation in the wild forested mountains. Jesus's saying"My Kingdom is not of this world" was meant, first of all to disabuse those who wanted him to raise a Jewish revolt against Rome to restore a State of Israel - secondly it meant "what I envisage as my Kingdom is not to be found anywhere in the world as we know it", it did not mean that it could only exist in some "other worldly angelic dimension" beyond the veil of death to mortal life as it was interpreted to mean by Catholic theologians.

It is very hard for those who have not been initiated into the mysteries of other dimensions to see what the shaman can see - which is why societies needed to be guided by "those who had seen the inner light beyond".

Mission of Christ was to show us the way whereby, starting with preparation in living by his ethical teachings, we may follow the way he offered to all of becoming capable of being thus shamanically initiated into an ultimate direct communion with our Creator.

At this final or second coming prophesied in Revelations, all hierarchies would cease as a result of everyone being "levelled up" to the highest possible humanly achievable level. This is how it was understood by the saint-shamans who were examples of how we can follow likewise, as by the Cathars!

The rapid spread of early Christian influence was due to several vital factors: It was the continuation of an evolution from long-extant & established shamanic tribal traditions which provided the framework of understanding whereby so many diverse peoples could comprehend it - the exception to this was the negative response to its ideas from neighbouring Arabia because it had an image-problem - - they saw it as just another radical reform of Judaism and thereby irrelevant to them!

Had it been a totally different new religion it would have been more difficult to persuade non-Jews of its merits - within a very few centuries, in those ages of slow, dangerous and primitive transport & communications, it reached as far a-field as North Eastern Siberia & China, Scandanavia, Ethiopia & India as well as within the direct communications area of the Roman & Byzantine Empires. Some of the Germanic tribal leaders, as of the Franks, had already been Christianised when they 'invaded' the crumbling Western Empire in search of new lands. Indeed, the message of the faith spread most rapidly when its devotees came as worldly-powerless humble refugees than ever when they came as conquerors.

The Roman Empire was secular structure with de facto freedom of religion. It initially feared the Christian religion because its revolutionary ideals and fearless messianism constituted a political threat to its rulers, especially being of Jewish origin, after the messianic Jewish revolt of AD 70 -77 which had potentially threatened the whole structure of their lucrative Empire by encouraging other nations to revolt also! Constantine had the political cunning to acknowledge that "if you can't beat them, you must join them or buy them off"!

Prior to his 'conversion', however, in the 2nd & 3rd centuries AD, persecution had driven many devotees to and beyond the fringes of the Empire in a diaspora that ringed the Empire from Ireland in the West, Armenia & Chaldea in the East, Ethiopia in the South, and the Slavonic-steppes to forests of Eurasia in the North East to the forests of Northern Germany. Wherever these small groups of people took refuge with their self-sufficient communities, they interacted with and absorbed some of the host cultural and spiritual heritage in exchange, in Jesus' spirit of a universalist "unity in diversity". An interesting example of such a fusion survived till well into the C20th in Siberia - the sklopjes, which claimed as a member the Staretz-healer Rasputin and who combined an Essene, pacifist Christianity, in which Christ was the supreme Shaman together with his wife and consort, Mary Magdala, with ancient 'pagan' monthly full-moon rites of sexual and psychedelic initiations dancing naked round pine-trees, and using magic (fly-agoric mushrooms) as aids to Cosmic communion with the Godhead and other spirits.

Ethically this was the purest manifestation of the faith in the Russian Empire, persecuted as a political threat to the State by both Czars and Communists for its pacifism. The native Hebrew-Chinese version revealed an interaction with Zen-Tao practices and Mongolian-Tibetan Buddhism. Nestorian, Iranian Christianity took on many of the theological & cosmological understandings of the older Zoroastrianism, with its very ancient Vedic & shamanic roots.

There is a much fuller account of the Nature of Western Celtic Christianity in "The Book of Welsh Saints" by T.B. Breverton of Glyndwyr Publications.

The persecution easing, then finally lifted, by AD 300, this newly enriched & varied Christian message "moved back in" as missionaries, from the communities on the fringes, as from Ireland & Scotland into Wales & the rest of Britain, detached from its Jewish roots, re-rooted in a wider humanity, to ensure its establishment throughout Eurasia. This was bound to create problems for later as both the first Graeco-Egyptian Gnosticism with its belief in reincarnation & the "shamanistic" variations of the Faith from other fringe areas were bound to clash with the political-power corrupted, hierarchical & centralised version created by the Emperor Constantine in Rome & Byzantium out of the simple fact that "an official State Church" has to have "a clear & set doctrinal definition" and its "open-dialectic evolution" was finally officially declared ended by the Council of Nicea in AD 450 when the concepts of "party lines" and 'deviationist heresies' were born!

It is only thanks to the fact that Europe had become politically fragmented into a plethora of many sovereign regions & Kingdoms that this new doctrinal monolith cold only operate in a very limited area; thus, traditions of the Shamanistic Christ could survive for many centuries, free from persecution, to this day, in areas beyond the control of its agent-rulers!

Thus spirituality evolves and will continue to evolve. It is never conceived entire ex-nihil, like a Holy Child on one set day in all the time of Creation, to replace every focus that preceded it!

What matters most about any religion is its core spirituality, not its outward cultural interpretations, not its intellectual attempts at explanations so much as its inner "Mysteries of Faith" which go back many millennia to Man's first sense of magic & wonder at the invisible Spirit Realms within & beyond creation!

David Allen Stringer - 2004-11-21
International Coordinator - The Universal Alliance
http://www.universalalliance.org.uk