An individual socialised in such a way as to straddle the gender boundary ought to be able to span all boundaries … We are here at the heart of the shamanic mediating of relationships and probably all religious forms of mediation. Bernard Saladin d’Anglure
The recent seminar held here in London on shamanism, sex and gender was one of the most interesting seminars to date. Attendees ranged from those with no experience of shamanism at all, to experienced pagan practitioners and writers and the discussion covered topics from consciousness to Siberian reindeer-muscle dildos.
My own interest in this area comes not from anthropology but from having authored three books on sex and sexuality and been an academic researcher in the area of sexual behaviour. From a shamanic perspective, sex and sexual relationships are things that frequently occur in my clients non-ordinary reality experiences.
Gender is an issue that recurs in many people’s relationships with their spirits as specific forms of teaching. While researching in this area for the seminar, I was interested to discover that evolutionary biologists have discovered more than two genders in hundreds of animal species including, to my surprise, the Red Deer, which has one female and two male genders. The White Throated Sparrow, pictured below has several genders, each with distinct functions. Of course a vast number of species on this planet, such as plants, fungi and single cell organisms reproduce asexually. One of the main topics discussed during a seminar was the idea of duality, of separation and the division of things into male and female, night and today, hot and cold, which can seem a peculiarly Western way of thinking, though eastern esoteric practices also describe polarities, through for example, yin and yang. This kind of separation and division encourages the notion of gender, sex, sexual desire, sexuality as a fixed and unchanging, despite the invaluable work of researchers like Alfred Kinsey more than 60 years ago which 'shocked' the world into the realisation that there was no such thing as 'normal' when it came to human sexuality. As someone who followed in Kinsey's large footsteps during the AIDS panic of the late 80's and investigated male bisexuality (as part of a much larger study of male sexual behaviour in terms of HIV and the transmission of disease), the word 'normal' very quickly vanished from my vocabulary.
Separation and division are also linguistically defined. The English language has clear gender structures, though lacks gendered nouns, unlike French, for example, in which language even the chair you sit on and the knife you use is clearly defined as masculine or feminine.
The Algonquian languages of the first peoples of the northeastern USA and southeastern Canada, such as the Ojibwe, have no male/female genders, instead distinctions are made between animate and inanimate objects. As an English speaker, with marginal French and Spanish, I would find it difficult to think only in terms of ‘it’ or ‘one’, though no doubt I'd get used to it! Words used as names can also affect gender in the sense of social roles, French ethnographer Bernard Saladin d’Anglure in his book sub-titled, ‘Masculin, Feminin ou Chaman?’ he describes the Inuit tradition of naming a child regardless of sex and the child accepting the gender of the name. Saladin d’Anglure also describes the Inuit belief that their children choose their sex shortly before birth and that the genitalia adjust to the decision.
These things are tiny examples of what is a vast world literature of gender change, sex change and cross-dressing throughout human history and from around the world. Almost all cultures have gods, goddesses who can change form at will or have multiple natures. The Hindu god Shiva is often depicted as Ardhanari, the synthesis of Shiva and Parvati, and the word ‘hermaphrodite’ describes a form of the Greek god Hermes and the goddess Aphrodite.
Having read several years ago about the year-long, gender-swap training of apprentice shaman's among traditional peoples of subarctic Siberia, I was struck by what I imagined to be very expansive and forward-thinking learning. What a pity, I thought, that general practitioners in the UK didn’t have to undergo a year of cross-dressing and transsexual living, in order to have a better understanding of the problems of opposite sex patients. On further exploration it became clear that I’d missed the point. As with Shiva and Hermes/Aphrodite, the change traditional shamanic apprentices experienced had little to do with patient care, and almost everything to do with developing a ‘third sex’ identity, a spiritual androgyny. And the purpose of this? As Saladin d’Anglure notes in the opening quote above, “An individual socialised in such a way as to straddle the gender boundary ought to be able to span all boundaries …”. In other words, if moving between male and female roles and identities is unquestioned, moving between realities as a shaman should be just as straightforward. Many traditional shamanic societies value multi-gendered/genderless shamans as being spiritually more identified with non-ordinary reality and so better able to mediate in the world of the spirits. Such persons are seen as having the potential to contain and reconcile all opposites.
Among the Chukchi people, a traditional shamanic culture of northern Kamchatka, in Siberia, multi-gendered states with many permutations of dress and behaviour, alongside ‘virtual’ sex changes, were considered the natural way of things for shamans. Male shamans who became female experienced natural muscle loss, developed female social speech patterns, were believed to give birth to animal spirits and even to human offspring. Female shamans who became male carried weapons, dressed as a man and often married young girls, performing their ‘marital duties’ using a dildo made from reindeer muscle. The young girls might also have sex with male partners, but any children born from these liaisons were considered by the entire community to be the children of the shaman.
And what about the significance of androgyny and genderlessness in contemporary shamanism? In our highly sexualised world the idea of spiritual androgyny isn’t an easy one to contemplate.
Even within spiritual practice there are clear gender boundaries and these days everyone seems to be looking for their "inner masculine", or their "goddess within." What my own spirit helpers have shown me over the years, and which they clarified for me during a long and wonderful journey of exploration prior to the seminar, is that spirit – which includes myself – has no gender. What I am learning through my spirits is that everything that is, is energy whether that is the Big Bang, kundalini rising, a nuclear explosion, intention, or orgasm. Shamans work with energy, with power, calling on the power of the universe through the power of intention. Quantum physics and shamanism are slowly coming together, though not all scientists and not all shamans would accept this view, and agreeing that we are not just in the universe, the universe is in us.
In my own journeys and in those of my clients, sexual activity or gender changes either of the person journeying, or of the spirit helpers, are very often a teaching; something is being pointed about about behaviour, energy, attitudes or relationships. The journey that I did to my spirits to ask about the nature of sex and gender in shamanism was wonderfully explicit. It’s rare for all my questions to be answered and so fully. What emerged were several key teachings about sex, gender and spirit of which these are a few:
Separation and division are also linguistically defined. The English language has clear gender structures, though lacks gendered nouns, unlike French, for example, in which language even the chair you sit on and the knife you use is clearly defined as masculine or feminine.
The Algonquian languages of the first peoples of the northeastern USA and southeastern Canada, such as the Ojibwe, have no male/female genders, instead distinctions are made between animate and inanimate objects. As an English speaker, with marginal French and Spanish, I would find it difficult to think only in terms of ‘it’ or ‘one’, though no doubt I'd get used to it! Words used as names can also affect gender in the sense of social roles, French ethnographer Bernard Saladin d’Anglure in his book sub-titled, ‘Masculin, Feminin ou Chaman?’ he describes the Inuit tradition of naming a child regardless of sex and the child accepting the gender of the name. Saladin d’Anglure also describes the Inuit belief that their children choose their sex shortly before birth and that the genitalia adjust to the decision.These things are tiny examples of what is a vast world literature of gender change, sex change and cross-dressing throughout human history and from around the world. Almost all cultures have gods, goddesses who can change form at will or have multiple natures. The Hindu god Shiva is often depicted as Ardhanari, the synthesis of Shiva and Parvati, and the word ‘hermaphrodite’ describes a form of the Greek god Hermes and the goddess Aphrodite.
Having read several years ago about the year-long, gender-swap training of apprentice shaman's among traditional peoples of subarctic Siberia, I was struck by what I imagined to be very expansive and forward-thinking learning. What a pity, I thought, that general practitioners in the UK didn’t have to undergo a year of cross-dressing and transsexual living, in order to have a better understanding of the problems of opposite sex patients. On further exploration it became clear that I’d missed the point. As with Shiva and Hermes/Aphrodite, the change traditional shamanic apprentices experienced had little to do with patient care, and almost everything to do with developing a ‘third sex’ identity, a spiritual androgyny. And the purpose of this? As Saladin d’Anglure notes in the opening quote above, “An individual socialised in such a way as to straddle the gender boundary ought to be able to span all boundaries …”. In other words, if moving between male and female roles and identities is unquestioned, moving between realities as a shaman should be just as straightforward. Many traditional shamanic societies value multi-gendered/genderless shamans as being spiritually more identified with non-ordinary reality and so better able to mediate in the world of the spirits. Such persons are seen as having the potential to contain and reconcile all opposites.Among the Chukchi people, a traditional shamanic culture of northern Kamchatka, in Siberia, multi-gendered states with many permutations of dress and behaviour, alongside ‘virtual’ sex changes, were considered the natural way of things for shamans. Male shamans who became female experienced natural muscle loss, developed female social speech patterns, were believed to give birth to animal spirits and even to human offspring. Female shamans who became male carried weapons, dressed as a man and often married young girls, performing their ‘marital duties’ using a dildo made from reindeer muscle. The young girls might also have sex with male partners, but any children born from these liaisons were considered by the entire community to be the children of the shaman.
And what about the significance of androgyny and genderlessness in contemporary shamanism? In our highly sexualised world the idea of spiritual androgyny isn’t an easy one to contemplate.
Even within spiritual practice there are clear gender boundaries and these days everyone seems to be looking for their "inner masculine", or their "goddess within." What my own spirit helpers have shown me over the years, and which they clarified for me during a long and wonderful journey of exploration prior to the seminar, is that spirit – which includes myself – has no gender. What I am learning through my spirits is that everything that is, is energy whether that is the Big Bang, kundalini rising, a nuclear explosion, intention, or orgasm. Shamans work with energy, with power, calling on the power of the universe through the power of intention. Quantum physics and shamanism are slowly coming together, though not all scientists and not all shamans would accept this view, and agreeing that we are not just in the universe, the universe is in us.In my own journeys and in those of my clients, sexual activity or gender changes either of the person journeying, or of the spirit helpers, are very often a teaching; something is being pointed about about behaviour, energy, attitudes or relationships. The journey that I did to my spirits to ask about the nature of sex and gender in shamanism was wonderfully explicit. It’s rare for all my questions to be answered and so fully. What emerged were several key teachings about sex, gender and spirit of which these are a few:
- What moves between individuals during sex is a part of their life force, which is part of all that is. It appears that male and female come together, but really one spirit comes together with another spirit to create a third, and all are one and all are the same.
- Biology is important because it continues that exchange of life force and creates the vehicle for embodied spirit.
- In response to the Q “Are shamans the third sex?” I am told, “love has no gender and no sex.”
- In response to the Q “What about duality, yin/yang, M/F … ?” I am asked “Do you want it to have meaning?” I say “No, it divides”. I am told “It’s important to look for the heart of the thing. The time for taking apart has passed, it’s about bringing together now. Differences are only of the shell.”
- When we engage in any way with spirit in alternate reality we are changed by that experience, and spirit is also changed through engaging with us.
I was very moved by the power and directness of this particular journey, I re-entered ordinary reality feeling that I had been offered insights that were invaluable, mostly because of how they had been given. Sex, it was revealed is just another aspect of quantum possibility and love, love is about the exchange of hearts, which have no sex and no gender.
For those readers interested in finding out more about shamanism for themselves, please note upcoming courses, seminars and workshops. See sidebar above.
1 comments:
Wonderful article and I really wish I could have been at the seminar described here. I am transexual, a 'two-spirit' man who was assigned female at birth and who is being reborn through my transition as much in spirit as I am in physicality. I am rediscovering my shamanic spirituality as I transition and it has been of great comfort to know that my ancestor spirits are very much around for me throughout this process. I'm fascinated by the reindeer-muscle dildos too!!
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