SHAMANIC COSMOLOGY OF EL MALEH RACHAMIM PART 2
Who will be our Shamans?
We all have a role in the journey of the deceased. We must do everything we can while we are living to make sure that our soul is readily bound to the rope of all of life. If we live a complete life, it is easier for our soul to find its proper after death home—that’s what is being taught in all kinds of different traditions. On the other hand, if we die frustrated with how our life has been, unresolved in our relationships, having felt that we wasted this precious life, we will find it harder to be bound up properly. Our surviving relatives also have a role as they mourn us through following some of the practices of shiva, reciting El Maleh Rachamim at the funeral and then Kaddish for 11 months.
But what if this doesn’t work, perhaps because the soul is really troubled or because there’s no one to mourn him/her or the relatives don’t follow any of the mourning rituals?
Eliade say that this is the core job of the shaman from a cross cultural perspective. “The shaman becomes indispensable when the dead person is slow to forsake the world of the living. In such a case, only the shaman possesses the power of the psychopomp.” (Eliade, “Shamanism” pp. 208-209). The mystics of Safed agreed with this. (Chajes, Between Worlds pp. 141ff). Martin Prechtel, a modern day Mayan Shaman, describes the shaman’s task in making sure the soul goes to where it should (Long Life, Honey in the Heart pp. 362-364).
But we modern Jews don’t have shamans. Cantors and Rabbis are just not trained, at all, in being shamans. Can we generate this kind of specialist who will help the souls of the deceased? Who will educate our people that we have too many ancestors whose souls are not bound to the rope of all of life, floating around, disconnected, waiting to be in their proper place? Who will be our shamans? Who will fulfill the role of the Ari in the story with which I close?
“Rabbi Isaac Luria of Safed, known as the Ari, believed that trees were resting places for souls, and performed a tree ritual in the month of Nisan, when trees are budding. He felt that this was the right time to participate in the rescue of wandering spirits, incarnated in lower life forms. The Ari often took his students out into nature to teach them there. On one such occasion, upon raising his eyes, he saw all the trees peopled with countless spirits, and he asked them, “Why have you gathered here?” They replied, “we did not repent during our lifetime. We have heard about you, that you can heal and mend us.” And the Ari promised to help them. The disciples saw him in conversation, but they were not aware of with whom he conversed. Later they asked him about it, and he replied, “If you had been able to see them, you would have been shocked to see the crowds of spirits in the trees.” (Howard Schwartz “Tree of Souls”, p. 165. Text is originally from Sefer Toldot HaAri.)
