In many shamanic cultures masks have been worn in healing, ceremony and dance, to give a spirit a face, to share a vision with the community, or to let the wearer take on the power of a spirit, and some masks were treated as power objects in their own right. In many cultures masks or eye coverings were also used for a plainer reason, to shut out sight during a journey. Masks are amongst the many ritual objects of highly ceremonial shamanic cultures; for the journey itself, a blindfold will do.
What are shamanic masks used for? #
Several things, depending on the culture. A mask, as the shamanic practitioner and teacher Christina Pratt describes it, is a covering worn over the face by which the spirits are brought into the physical world to interact with humans. Masks are often first seen in a shaman’s visions or journeys; they are not meant to be realistic, but to capture the spirit of what was seen, and making the mask brings that vision into the physical world for the whole community to witness. Some masks are used to tell stories and oral histories through drama; others are made to hold the energies of particular spirits, and then they are power objects in their own right. The most basic mask, she notes, is face paint. Even so, “the actions of the shaman, not the form of the mask, determine its use”, and the shaman must still dance the spirit’s dance and sing the curing songs.1
The anthropologist Piers Vitebsky places the mask within shamanic performance. A shaman can move from acting as an animal to dressing up as that animal, or from pulling a grotesque face to putting on a mask, and a costume underlines the work begun by dance and gesture.2 A shaman who wears a mask, or speaks with the voice of a god or an ancestor, is at the same moment an ordinary person and someone spiritually empowered, and the performance changes the inner experience of everyone taking part. Saying that shamanic action can be highly theatrical, in his view, is not saying the shaman is only acting.3 See What are power objects, fetishes, amulets and talismans?
Where were masks most used? #
In many parts of the world. In North America, Pratt names the cultures of the Pacific Northwest Coast, the Northeast and the Southwest in particular, and she describes the elaborate cedar masks of the Northwest Coast, some with hinged parts that open to transform one face into another, used in stories of heroes who change from animal to human and back.4 Studying the masks of the region, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss found that the Salish Swaihwe ceremonial masks, which he does not describe as shamans’ masks, and the right to wear them in ceremonies, belonged exclusively to a few lineages of high rank, passed on through inheritance or marriage, and that the masks brought luck and helped their owners gain wealth.5 His wider conclusion was that “a mask is not primarily what it represents but what it transforms”. A mask, like a myth, is read alongside the other masks that could have stood in its place.6
The peoples of the Northwest Coast were hunter-gatherers, but of a rare kind. Food was so plentiful there that people could settle without farming, and these ‘complex hunter-gatherers’ developed hierarchies, inequality, slavery, mass warfare and chiefs, the same problems that agricultural Taker societies show. They are the exception that proves the rule. When anthropologists say ‘hunter-gatherers’ without qualification, they mean the egalitarian band peoples.7 So the rich mask traditions of the Northwest Coast are not evidence of how shamanism looked amongst nomadic hunter-gatherers.
Do I need a mask to practise shamanism? #
No. The books give no mask practice. How many objects a shaman has tends to reflect how much of their work is ritual and ceremony. In Fallen shamanic cultures, shamans may gather a great many ritual objects, including magical clothing, fans, masks, amulets, knives, bowls, bells, whistles and combs. Other shamans use no physical objects except the drum or rattle, and work with the healing powers of plants, animals and stones directly in shamanic reality.8 Therapeutic Shamanism gives no instructions for elaborate rituals, and encourages each person to find their own.9 A mask can still have a place for someone it helps, since whether to use physical representations at all is a matter of personal preference and what works for us.8 See What part do ritual and ceremony play in Therapeutic Shamanism?
Why cover the eyes when journeying? #
To cut off sight, the sense that roots us most firmly in ordinary reality. Humans are primates, and sight is our primary sense, so shamanic journeying is usually done in the dark. In indigenous cultures it was often done at night, deep in caves, or in dark yurts, long-houses or tepees, and in many cultures masks or eye coverings were used. In some cultures blind people were considered better at journeying, and some even went as far as deliberately blinding apprentice shamans. In most instances, though, a blindfold will do. It is not absolutely essential, but it is a great help whilst learning to journey, and a scarf tied around the head is enough.10 See What state of consciousness is used in journeying, and do journeys have to be visual?
What does the mask have to do with the persona? #
The persona is the mask we all wear. The middle-world selfMiddle-world self. The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer is what Carl Jung called the persona, from the Latin for ‘mask’, the face we present to the world. The trouble is that we come to think the mask is who we actually are, and waking up to our real self means realising that this persona is a mask a deeper self is wearing.11 Hollowing-outHollowing-out. The core, lifelong discipline of setting aside the middle-world self, its stories, agendas and preconceptions, so the Guides can work through us. The image: the shaman as hollow bone. Read the full answer is the practice of setting the middle-world self aside before a journey. See What is masking, and how is it linked to domestication? and What are hollowing-out and stalking our stories?
