Indigenous people, generally
poorer and powerless, have played no part in the creation of the current
climate crisis. And yet they are liable
to suffer most from it. In two centuries, our modern technological society has
created this crisis. Native traditions have lasted thousands of years without
wreaking havoc on the planet. They might
then be able to help us with the climate monster we have created.
One fact is key. Modern science
is quantitative, mathematical, technological, and soulless. If you look at a tree, a river, a mountain as
no more than material structures, why not uproot and reduce them to saleable items. In contrast, the indigenous mind honors
nature for its sacred value and creative benefits--the exact opposite of the
capitalistic vision of nature, treated as raw material for profiteering
corporations to exploit.
I’m struck by traditions that use
music as a way to live in harmony with nature. In the early 1930s, Ruth Murray
Underhill, at the behest of the Humanities Council of Columbia University,
spent time with the Papago Indians of Southern Arizona, an unusually dry and
inhospitable region of the Southwest.
What she discovered about their ceremonial life is described in her
book, Singing for Power: The Song Magic
of the Papago Indians (1938).
These peaceful descendants of the
Aztecs used a type of song magic to facilitate the various tasks of everyday
life. This region of the desert on the
border of Mexico was, and no doubt still is, overwhelmingly dry and hot. To
extract a living from such a barren desert domain called for some kind of
“magic”—something akin to psychokinesis
(mind over matter).
Papago ceremonies have different
names, The Drinking Ritual, Singing Up the Corn, The Peaceful Go to War, Eagle
Power, Ocean Power, and so forth. Each of these ceremonial tasks has songs,
stories, and narratives passed on in oral traditions. The magical language had to be memorized, as
we say, known by heart. And with
heart, I would add. The song magic is
meant to produce real effects, physical as well as mental. But can our minds do such things? The Papago Indians thought so.
Let’s see how it works with an
example, The Drinking Ritual, which is about rain magic. The only source of water for the Papago was
the sky in the rainy seasons.
In this ritual, a liquor is
extracted from the pulp of a giant cactus, and drunk. The fruits of this liquor ripen at the end of
the dry season. Drinking this liquor, which
has mind-altering effects, was thought to mirror and facilitate the
rainfall.
It was the duty of everyone to
drink to the point of saturation; in short, get seriously drunk, and become
like the rain-soaked earth. Apart from
this ceremony, boozing for private pleasure was verboten. Moreover, all of the ceremonies presupposed
widespread participation of the group.
This makes sense in light of what we know about paranormal group
dynamics.
But now where is the magic in all
this? Underhill provides an exact
explanation. “In accordance with the rules of Papago magic,” she writes, “which
always imitates the desired event, this act will bring the rain to moisten the
earth” (p.20). The drinking and altered state, however, is only the first part
of the ceremony meant to bring on the rain. Next is the singing. A hundred people, old men who know the songs,
women and everybody else either dance or sing of rain and clouds, red spiders,
frogs, and toads known for their affinity with rain.
In effect, there is a group
effort to imagine as vividly as possible the state of affairs they are trying
to bring about. The same method is used
for other ceremonies, making the corn grow, preparing for war, or dealing with
a troublesome person. And of course, for healing purposes. You have to sing or
in some way create compelling images of what you’re aiming for. Rain, a
healing, courage in war, whatever.
This must appear strange to a
culture addicted to materialism. Acquiring song magic implies different kinds
of skill and mental attitude. Underhill writes as follows: ““What of a society which puts no
premium whatever on aggressiveness and where the practical man is valued only
if he is a poet?”
The Papago were never at war with
whites or other tribes. In part this was
due to the forbidding landscape of this region of the Southwest. There was nothing there worth fighting for
and survival itself was not easily achieved.
You had to learn to sing for power just to survive. And the singing went
on for hours. You also had to use your imagination to perform magical
operations.
Readers will wonder about the
‘magic’ part of this story. It turns out
that the way the Papago magic is supposed to work is consistent with the way
psychokinesis (PK) works. To repeat: the
Papago tries through song and gesture to imagine and evoke the desired effect
as vividly as possible. Now, the physicist and parapsychologist, Helmut
Schmidt, argues that PK is a goal-oriented process. Schmidt found that subjects in PK
experiments succeeded when they focused entirely on the target they were aiming
to affect. Facing a panel of lights the
subject wants, say, to turn on the outermost light on the left side of the
panel. He has no idea of the complicated
process of how the lights on the panel are turned on and off. All he has to do focus on the desired outcome
to be effective—all attention is on the target, the aim.
Schmidt’s subjects were
remarkable in producing results. Lab
based evidence for psychokinesis proves that native people may also be
effective with their more life-based experiments with PK.
The Papago form of PK was based
on survival needs, not just to obtain a score in a parapsychological
experiment. The latter, in its sphere of
science, is hugely important. It’s part of a research movement that points to
our paranormal mental and physical abilities.
Papago Indian song magic offers
one way to reimagine our relationship to the natural world. What sort of people
were these brown-skinned Indians noted for their peaceful nature. “Beneath
their modern externals,” writes Ruth Underhill, “a life based on other ideals
than ours and aimed toward other goals.” She tells us there are three points
notable about these people.
They never raise their
voices. Living in a hardscrabble desert
community, you don’t waste your energy, and the barely audible manner of speech
suggests low emotional expenditure.
Theirs was a world where you were not free to deploy all kinds energy to
do what you want—travel, communicate, consume at will. Near silence was a way to store one’s inner
energy. The white traders said they needed to lip-read the Indians.
Secondly, Underhill writes of the
Papago: “Their movements are deliberate; our own swift jerkiness can hardly
comprehend the rhythm slowed down by the desert heat to the slow swing of a
wave under a ship’s bow in a dead calm.”
Clearly, an energy deprived environment will impose a different
lifestyle in many subtle ways, more deliberate and more careful and caring.
The last item she notes about the
Papago folk; they were always purring with laughter. “We who pass days, even
weeks, at hard work, with no more than a polite smile now and then, can
scarcely accustom ourselves to the gentle laughter which always accompanies
Papago talk.” She ends by noting that
she especially missed the murmuring mirth of the Papago when she got back to
New York.
Two final observations. First, the Papago story, as revealed from
Underhill’s study of the late 1930s, proves that ingenuity, imagination, and
social solidarity can create a culturally rich life, even in an environment
minimally endowed with the raw materials needed in ordinary life.
The second point I want to make
is to affirm the extraordinary work of Ruth Underhill. Now is the time to renew
and revise the relationship between modern science and indigenous beliefs and
practices. The song magic practiced by the Papago seems vitally credible in
light of what is known about apports, apparitions, poltergeists, shamanic and
saintly miracles, and controlled parapsychological experimentation.
It is important to state what is
possible, in light of modern parapsychological research. Groups of people can
indeed create forces that do things such as we learn from the Papago
ceremonials. These are socially integrated
activities directed toward benefitting all members of the community. We have barely begun to learn how to draw on
the latent forces within us. There’s a whole new science of creativity waiting
to be born—a science that may be of use in the coming battle with the climate
monster we have created.
