BESHT AS SHAMAN
Why talk about the Besht as a shaman? Because the world needs healing and Jewish shamans offer us authentic indigenous models for how to repair the world.
Let’s start with a definition of shamans.
Shamans undertake ecstatic conscious journeys through a tri-partite cosmos that has an upper world (s), lower world(s) and a horizontal plane. These journeys are undertaken to benefit the people, not for the direct benefit of the shaman. The shaman has spirit guides to help find the answers s/he seeks.
Ecstatic journeys are journeys where the physical body of the shaman might lie unmoving on the floor, or in front of the ark, or swaying or dancing, but the conscious part of the shaman goes for a journey to find answers he or she needs in other realms. The body of the shaman stays behind in this world, but some other part of the shaman goes on a journey.
Shamanism has a view of a tripartite cosmos. The upper world is a staple in Jewish thought, a realm of multiple heavens with our great sages having their own palaces where they host lessons. We’ll look at a heavenly ascent in more detail when we look at story 41 from In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov. The underworld is a mostly feared place of the dead and the evil, akin to the Christian idea of Hell by the time we get to the Besht. But we do have a story of where he descents to the lower world in an unsuccessful attempt to redeem the fallen sparks of the false Messiah, Shabbatei Zevi (story 66). There are also multiple stories of his ability to do accelerated travel in the middle world. This is something that is well known in other traditions and is an example of a shamanic ability of journeying in this world.
These journeys are undertaken to help the people. In the famous story 41, The Besht is only concerned with the welfare of the people. There’s no attempt to describe God or his palace. There’s no attempt to stay anywhere near there or to cling to God. In fact, when the trance is over, the story accounts that the Besht hurried to finish the prayers. The text doesn’t say why, but usually people want Neilah to end so they can break their fasts.
The shaman uses spirit guides to help find the answers s/he seeks. These spirit guides might be plants, as in South America, [1] they may be power animals or they may be revered teachers or ancestors. Ahijah the Shilonite is a perfect example of a revered teacher as spirit guide. [2] Contrary to some theoreticians of shamanism, the shaman’s relationship to spirits is not exclusively coercive—s/he only coerces spirits when that is needed for healing.
The Besht as shaman is testified to in a number of stories, including 18,21,34-37,39, 40, 41, 46, 57, 81, 91, 100,105, 135,137, 203,206. Let’s start with looking at story 41.
Story 41 is the famous story of the Besht in the Messiah’s Heavenly Palace. I’ve chosen story 41 because it is a great example of the Besht acting shamanically on behalf of the whole people.
The story begins on Yom Kippur Eve where the Besht perceives a charge that the Jews will lose the Torah. When the Besht led Neilah, he “began to make terrible gestures and he bent backwards until his head came close to his knees….His eyes bulged and he sounded like a slaughtered bull. He kept this up for two hours.” After Yom Kippur was over, people asked him about the charge and he told them that during the Neilah prayer he could move from one world to another. He came to one palace that was but one gate short of appearing before God. In that palace, the Besht said, he found all the prayers of the past fifty years had not ascended. They were instructed to wait for him, but the Besht on his own couldn’t take the prayers where they were supposed to go. So the Besht turned to his teacher, Ahijah, who also couldn’t help. They went to the palace of the Messiah and brought back two letters. The Besht took these two letters and opened the gate. The prayers ascended and because of the great joy of all the prayers, the charge was cancelled.
This seems totally shamanic to me. The Besht enters a trance and goes on a conscious journey, the details of which he can relate after he is out of his trance. When he gets stuck, he asks his teacher (in other traditions this is where we would have a power animal or the plant spirit) for help. We see here a core difference between shamanism and magic in the relationship with the spirits. The Besht requests help from Ahijah, he in no way attempts to command, manipulate or coerce him into helping, given his status as a helping spirit.
Let’s look at story 105 where the Besht revives a dying boy as an example of personal healing. The story depicts the Besht laying on the floor with his hands and legs extended. The story has the Besht forcing the soul to reenter the boy’s body. The Besht made some kind of bargain for the boy’s life (the story says the time for the boy’s death had come, but the Besht cancelled that out, and in exchange, the Besht agreed to accept “fiery lashes”.
This story might not sound like it involves any trance. There are three reasons why I think it did. First, the story has the Besht laying on the floor with his hands and legs extended. I think this is code for a posture in which he entered into trance. Second, the story has the Besht agreeing to fiery lashes. No lashes were given in ordinary reality, so we are left with two choices. Either this is a metaphor, or the Besht must have received them in what Harner would call non-ordinary reality. Third, there’s the presence of the mikveh, where the Besht goes before he heals the boy. This can be read simply as an act of purification before entering into a ritual. However, bodies of water are very typical means of entering into the underworld and the frequency with which we have stories of the Besht using the mikveh make me wonder. There is an interesting story in Shivhei Ha Besht (story 206,) where the Besht says to R. Yaakov Yosef of Polnoye, a main disciple “Why is it you remain for so long in the mikveh, and why when I go to the mikveh do I just close my eyes and I see all the worlds?”
Why talk about the Besht as a shaman? Because the world needs healing and Jewish shamans offer us authentic indigenous models for how to repair the world.
The next blog post will talk about how to distinguish the magical, mystical and shamanic elements in the Besht and other Jewish practitioners.
[1] For plants as teachers see Michael Harner’s book about The Jivaro: People of the Sacred Waterfalls. See also Shaman’s Drum magazine, issue # 80 and any of Richard Shultes books on the Amazon or Elliot Cowan’s book Plant, Spirit Medicine. In the Amazon, the ayahuasca plant itself is seen as the teacher of the different medical cures needed for patients.
[2] There are 5 stories in Shivhei Ha Besht that feature Ahijah, all of them in his role as the Besht’s teacher.
Chagall a man flying. I have always wondered about where all the images he painted came from….