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Healing Through Images: The Magical Flight and Healing Geography of Nepali Shamans

Author(s): Robert R. DesjarlaisSource: Ethos, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Sep., 1989), pp. 289-307Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/640435 .

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Healing through Images:T h e Magical F l i g h t a n d

Healing Geography fNepali Shamans

ROBERT R. DESJARLAISDuring their healing ceremonies, Nepali shamansjourney on mag-ical flights in pursuit of lost souls or in search of medicinal knowl-edge concerning their patient. Traveling through a landscape bothphysical and metaphorical, the shaman's spirit visits several fea-tures of the countryside, ranging from the valley of Kathmandu tothe "inner mountain snow fields" of Tibet. On this voyage he maycommunicate with supernatural beings who inhabit and representcertain geographical domains, such as "the master spirit of the for-est" or "the spirit of the crossroads." This itinerary also affects thesubjectiveexperience of the patient, who ruminates over the imagesand events articulated by the shaman.This paper analyzes how the "healing geography" developed bythe shaman during his magical flight-images of forests, rivers,mountains, and crossroads-provokes a healing transformation inhis patient. Afteroutlining the phenomenon of magical flight as it isfound in Nepali shamanism,' I explore the landscape of images en-ROBERT R. DESJARLAIS is a Ph.D. candidate, Department of Anthropology, Universityof California,Los Angeles.

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countered by the shamans during their journeys and inquire intowhat such images may mean for the patient.2 Then I examine thehealing dynamics which I propose are embedded in the shaman'sexpression of his journey.My thesis is that, along with other symbolic idioms (such as cos-mological and interpersonal "relational" images), these geograph-ical images serve as a symbolic matrix representing certain personalexperiences of the patient.3 The shaman creates a dynamic healingcontext in which he guides the patient through such metaphors ofexperience. Healing, as I define it, entails a transformative processin which a person moves from one "domain of experience" (Fernan-dez 1986) to another, that is, from a personal experience of illness toone of lasting health. Through the manipulation of images symbolicof personal experience, I argue, the shaman simultaneously trans-forms the patient's experience of selfhood. In light of this, I wish toexamine how the shaman transforms the experiential world of hispatient by evoking, manipulating, and interpreting distinct "geo-graphical" images in order to both re-present experiences of illnessand present novel ones of healing and health.

My presentation is in part a metaphorical one, for I want to givea sense of how human beings creatively anchor their experienceswithin a culturally constituted matrix of symbols. As I will show,the notion of "magical flight" may be viewed as a metaphoric win-dow through which we can understand how people move, imagi-natively and experientially, through their healing geographies, bethey of the earth, the body, or the mind.4

MAGICAL FLIGHTOne of the intriguing aspects of the magical flight of Nepali sha-manism is that the shaman's excursion does not always involve a

pure "magical flight," as the excursion of Siberian shamans is saidto do (cf. Eliade 1964). Although the Nepali shaman is occasionallyreported tojourney to a lower- or upperworld (Mumford 1985; Wat-ters 1975), he usually ambles along a familiar-albeit highly signif-icant-terrestrial path.5 The shaman moves from hill to knoll to-ward his destination, reciting step-by-step his detailed itinerary tothe participants of the healing ceremony. One shaman's chant, forinstance, successively mentions a half-dozen hamlets, two rivercrossings, a cave dwelling, a monastery, a sacred shrine, and a


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"place of origin and fertility" (Allen 1974:8). We can see how theshamanic flights in Nepal are basically "earthbound" in this pas-sage from Hitchcock (1967:157):[The shaman's] closest approach to the classic otherworldly journey is a real ter-restrialjourney to the burial ground, where he lies on the stones of the grave andcalls to the soul as if it were a child, luring it from the clutches of its captor orenticer.... Even the helper spirits of the Nepalese shaman are somewhat earth-bound. They are conceived of as grazing in various localities. When the shamancalls, they journey across the local countryside, journeys that sometimes are spec-ified in elaborate detail.

Throughout the ethnographic literature on Nepali shamanism wefind that suchjourneys are expressed in great detail. Messerschmidtcomments on a Gurung ceremony geared toward delivering the de-ceased to the land of the dead:[The shaman] recites, among other things, the names of well known geographiclocations leading from the high mountains, down through familiar highland pas-tures and forests to the village. This funerary geography includes points on theroutealong which the forefathersare said to have come when they firstsettled southof the Himalaya (fromthe North). It now serves as the route along which the spiritsof the deceased reapproachthe village after death. [1976:208]

Although the shaman's flight is earthbound, it is doubly meaning-ful, for a symbolic matrix has been graphed onto the physical land-scape. This combination of environmental features and icons sym-bolic of human experience is illustrated in the healing geography ofa Magar shaman:The shaman travels east to a high mountain pass, and from theredescends into the"underworld."Many of the geographical names used are both real and symbolic.For example,just beyond Dhorpatan is a large stone with a natural groove aroundits middle. The stone is called "The Tying Place of the Death Sacrifice," and assuch is a symbolic road markerfor the road to death. The groove is attributed tothe wear of the ropes of animals which have been tied there for the "Casting-away-the-soul" sacrifice. Furtheron, at the.mountain pass, is a dividing of watersheds.The water which runs toward the village is known as "The Waters of Remem-brance," and the water flowing the other way as "The Waters of Forgetfulness."In retrieving the soul, it is said that if the shaman can overtake it while it is stillwithin the Waters of Remembrance, its capture and subsequent reinstallation iscomparativelyeasy. If, on the other hand, the soul has reached the Waters of For-getfulness,it will forgetits home and family and wander into the underworld. [Wat-ters 1975:146]In sum, traversing the Himalayan countryside, either to inter thedead or revitalize the living, Nepali shamans essentially use a geo-


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graphical model of human experience, ranging from the Waters ofRemembrance to the road to death.THE SHAMAN'S ALTAR

The shaman's flight finds iconic expression in the altar that someNepali shamans use during their healing ceremonies. For the Ta-mang and Sherpa shaman, this altar is composed of a set of ricedough tormaeffigies (Furer-Haimendorf 1964; Holmberg 1980; Ort-ner 1978). Within this "house of spirits" (Holmberg 1980:300), eachtormarepresents a particular spirit or deity invoked during the per-formance of the ceremony. At another metaphorical level, however,there is a veritable "world imagined in the altar," for enclosedwithin are hills and forests in which the la (spirits) reside (Holmberg1980:300-301). The shaman travels within this world when he sha-manizes: "Chanting he steps up from high peak to high peak, andthose high peaks are before him on the altar" (Holmberg 1980:312).The spirits and deities represented in the shaman's altar-andwhich possess the shaman-are generally considered to reside atspecific locales within the vicinity of the village. Hitchcock, for in-stance, notes that some of the spirits that possess the Magar shaman"are known to live nearby, in a waterfall, a spring, a rock, or a partof the forest" (1974:74). Gods, meanwhile, are believed to originateand reside at the tops of hills and mountains (Furer-Haimendorf1955; Winkler 1976:261). There are grounds, then, for inferring his-torical and analogic relations between the animistic healing geogra-phies and the pantheons of supernatural beings with whom the sha-mans communicate, both during their magical flights and whenthey are possessed by such spirits.Like the Tamang shaman, the Limbu shaman uses an elaboratealtar in the diagnosis and cure of disease associated with witchcraftand Nahen, the spirit of envy and jealousy (Jones 1976:37-38). Jonesreports that one Limbu shaman constructed his altar out of a bam-boo ladder with seven steps.According to theyeba [shaman], the steps symbolized the "evils of existence" withwhich he was capable of communication during trance .... During his trance, his"soul" would journey up this ladder symbolizing his journey through seven celes-tial realms inhabited by supernatural beings. At the base of the altar, he con-structed a small "fence" of bamboo .... The fence ... symbolized the land of thedead. The yeba's soul was believed to travel to this realm during trance, if need be,


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HEALINGTHROUGH MAGES 293to release the spirits of those who lost their "soul" during illness, sleep, or attacksby spirits of the dead. [Jones 1976:37-38]The shaman's altar thus serves as a symbolic map for his journeythroughsacred terrain.6

THE LANDSCAPE OF IMAGESThis terrain does not exist solely on an esoteric, supernaturalplane evoked within the pale glow of inner-room shamanic cere-

monies. Culled from the surface featuresof their daily environment,these images permeate the everydaywords, experiences, and "imag-inings" of Nepali highland peoples. These villagers, in turn, projecta profusionof meanings and memories onto the experiential fissuresof their countryside.7To adopt a concept fromJames Fernandez (1986), such imagesrepresent"domains of experience." In an analysis of religious revi-talization movements, Fernandez discusses how these movementsdraw upon a "repository of images," anchored in the "nether re-gions of the mind," in order to represent communal motives andexperiences (1986:174).Each of these images derives from or is a pictorialization of a domain of experi-ence-the domain of forest life, of domestic life, of military affairs,of supernaturalrelations.... The performanceof these images revitalizes a domain of experienceand participation. [Fernandez 1986:175]As the Tamang shaman calls out the places where a lost soul mayreside, it is evident that he, too, revitalizes domains of experiencethroughthe performanceof images arising out of the nether regionsof his and the patient's mind:. . . in a ne[place or heaven] of the homelessin a neof confusionin a neof distressin a neof rumorousgossipin a neof cannibalsin a neof closed mouthsin a neof licentious sex. ... [Holmberg 1980:294]

What is most striking about this passage is how foreign to us arethe "etiologies" of illness evoked by the shaman. The images con-tained within our own healing geography-maps of "innerworlds,"infantile neuroses, and DMS-III categories-would leave us poorly


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outfitted to explore the terrain that the Nepali shaman roams.Nevertheless, if we inquire into how images give form and articu-lated meaning to the inchoate flow of subjective experience, we canunderstand how the shaman works with such metaphors of experi-ence to provoke transformations in the worlds of his patients.

ILLNESSAs is glimpsed in the passage above, incidents of illness among

Nepali highland peoples are often mapped out onto the landscape.Individuals fall sick when unwittingly traversing through the localeof spirit beings, including various bridges, streams, trees, forests,and mountains (Greve 1981-82:108; Mumford 1985:100-101). Theoffended spirit assaults the intruder, provoking illness.

In describing the onset of illness, an individual will often givemeaning to his malaise by embedding it within a matrix of geo-graphical metaphors: "A Bhut [ancestor ghost] attacked me as I wasat the crossroads up along the ridge . . .," a sick Sherpa woman fromthe village of Gulphubanyang related to me one day. Sharma(1986:29), meanwhile, reports that Ranke Bhut, literally meaningBhut in the form of light, "are very common at the banks of a riveror around cremation grounds." Finally, if a Tibetan living in North-ern Nepal dreams either of falling off a cliff or "walking naked in astrange land or in a wide open field or along a river," then that per-son's soul has probably been lost (Mumford 1985:238-239).

Macdonald (1976:322-323) describes how the Limbu believethere to be seven feminine spirits who provoke illness. The spirits,each specializing in a certain malady, are generally known to live indistinct habitats. For example, the tangled-haired Latteburheni,whorenders one deaf, mute, and blind, is found in places hot and cold.Her partner, Kali burheni,inhabits the jungles of the Himalayas.Chamki burheniroams among plains, sandy places, and bamboothickets, tugging on peoples' eyelids and hair. Finally, the black-garbed Khut Khattai burheni eaves henlike footprints. Anyone whofollows these tracks becomes crazy and dies. Like her associates,then, this chicken-footed spirit scratches out a malignant paththrough the frailties of Limbu experience.


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HEALINGTHROUGH MAGES 295THE FOREST

The forest is a vivid example of how such geographical imagestouch the lives of Nepali villagers. One ethnographer sums up theNepali's perception of the forest asthe evil world of wild beasts and hostile spirits. In this region, where adults arereluctantto enter, there are numerous stories of people being injured,deformedorlost in the jungle. Children go to live there for several days without food in thecompany of elves and malevolent spirits. [Fournier 1976:105]During my own stay in Nepal, I was baffled by this recurrentem-phasis on the domain of the forest, or, as my Nepali friends calledit, "thejungle." I heard numerous stories of adolescents who with-draw into this realm, wander there for several days in a hallucina-tory state, and meet a varied assortment of creatures.8One such creature, the shaman spirit of the forest, or banjhankri,is known to meet such spirit-crazed individuals, take them into hishome (usually a cave), and teach them the shamanic craft. BanJhankri s usually depicted as being of dwarf-size, with feet facingbackward, and of enormous strength and intelligence. His wife,meanwhile, wishes to eat the shamanic initiate.The image of the forest represents a certain domain of human ex-perience. It is a place "where life is dangerous" (Macdonald1976:337),where rationality and culture are lacking, and where thebeasts and goblins of the dark, wild side of human action run ram-pant. Westernershave another term forthis experiential domain, animage equally metaphorical, located less among the shadows of ourphysical terrain and more within the symbolic matrix of our cor-poreal selves: we call it "the unconscious."How such images shape the everyday experience of individuals isexpressedin the 16-year-oldLimbu Muktuba's account of his inter-action with Tamphunga, the master spirit of the forest, believed tobe a source of evil and an agent of illness and bad luck (Sagant 1969,1976:42).The Limbu depict this anima-like creature as follows:Tamphunga lives on the outskirts of homesteads, on the edge of forests, and alongtrails.She has power over numerous nature divinities, which she uses to harm peo-ple who fail to placate her demands with frequentofferings. [Sagant 1976:42]Tamphunga is also known to appearwithin cemeteries and "the riv-ulets which descend from the mountains and pass close to hamlets"(Sagant 1969:110).9


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296 ETHOSTamphunga was always "playing tricks" on the shaman-to-beMuktuba (such as bending bamboo trees to block his path along the

"lower road" home from a wedding). While on a trip to Sikkim,Muktuba and some friends stopped to rest at a wayfarer's bench.Near [the bench] and a little farther down the hill was a small mountain streamthat crossed the path we had just climbed and continued flowing into the jungle.From where I was sitting, I saw an old woman arrive. She was carrying a smallbasket and had a sickle in her hand. I was watching her when all of the sudden shedisappeared by the stream. [Sagant 1976:62]Unseen by his friends, the master spirit of the forest appears alongthe margins of the boy's consciousness, soon to vanish within a smallmountain stream descending into the hidden recesses of the jungle.Emerging from the coarse landscape surrounding his existence, chi-meric images such as Tamphunga permeate the experiential mosaicof Muktuba's life. More than fodder for the tangible expression ofsubjective experience, such images, as I will presently discuss, canalso generateand transform xperiences.

HEALING IMAGESHow does healing occur through the use of "geographical" im-

agery? How does the shaman's magical flight provoke ideationaland behavioral transformations in the patient? Healing is a multi-dimensional process involving a combination of imaginative tech-niques and therapeutic strategies. I outline below several mecha-nisms involved in this process.

VISIONARY KNOWLEDGEOne reason the shaman goes on a magical flight is to diagnose thenature of the patient's illness. Penetrating the obscurity of the forest,a Limbu shaman cries out to his tutelary spirit, "Look, guru, look

closely, so the jungle does not prevent you from seeing; will his bodybe sick? Will he have fever?" (Sagant 1976:81).Holmberg (1980:312-314) gives a vivid description of how a Ta-mang shaman learns of his patient's condition by visiting one sitewithin the healing geography. The shaman travels to the beyhul hid-den places or god-heavens), often described as "inner mountainsnow fields." Achieving a visionary consciousness there, he "revealsthe faces of the la [spirits]" of the house and village, and "circles up


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HEALINGTHROUGH MAGES 297citing hills and peaks on the way to the gates of the heavens in Ti-bet" (Holmberg 1980:313).

Similarly, when a Gurung shaman searches "in his imagination"for the lost soul of his patient, he calls out "the names of goddessesof rock, soil, rivers and trees to ask if the soul has been taken andhidden in these domains" (Mumford 1985:246). He conducts a par-allel exploration when searching for a householder's "wealth," sto-len and hidden by a "witch." He tells his torma pirits to search,among other places, within fields, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, "the highcliffon the mountain," "the crevasses between the cliffs," "the greatmountain (Mt. Meru)," and the underworld (Mumford 1985:171)."All possibilities are covered," Mumford observes, "a perspectivethat is central to the shamanic tradition" (1985:246).In conducting such an exploratory surgery, searching for signs ofthe patient's situation, the shaman, and thus the patient, derivesome knowledge from the images arising out of the healing geog-raphy. "Reading" the condensation of associations stored in thefaces of the neand other places and beings he sights, the shaman hasthe intuitive ability to "see" the various experiential dynamics tac-itly embedded in the patient's condition. He then re-presents thisvisionary knowledge to the patient through imagery, making ex-plicit what was once implicit.The use of the verb "to reveal," denoting a sort of revelatory vi-sion, is found throughout Tamang shamans' commentaries of theirmagical flights (Holmberg 1980). For example, the Tamang con-sider the so, or "life-force," of a person to be represented by a sap-ling, referred to as so dungma, r "life-forcepole." When a person issick, the shaman goes on a revelatoryjourney to determine the con-dition of this tree:Sodungmalso refers to the tree of an individual that grows in a beautiful, heavenlyhill. On this celestial hill grow trees, one for each adult; when bombosshamans]revealthe condition of the so, they go there and see the sodungmaf theirclient. Theso dungmas an image of the integrity of life force.... If someone is ill, the bombomust revive the so. Before revival, a bomboirst must proceed on a revelatoryjour-ney. He envisions the beautiful heavenly hill on which grow trees for all human-kind. [Holmberg 1980:295]

This reading of images embodied in the Tamang healing geog-raphy, where trees symbolize life forces, is also reflected in a Limbushaman's divinatoryjourney, where flowers denote life forces:


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When the phedangma[shaman] finally reaches the Crossroads of the Three Pathsand Confluence of the Three Springs, he stops. Before him stretches the domain ofNahangma, called co-lung.... The co-lung that the phedangmasees from the cross-roads appears to be an immense field of flowers, each one of them symbolizing ahuman life. Those nearest him are the adolescents, while those farther away are thewomen, and finally the men.... The phedangmacan also prophesy after observingthe flower that symbolizes the life of his client. Bent, withered, or faded, it mayannounce an illness or approaching death. [Sagant 1976:81-82; see also Hardman1981:163]The Limbu shaman concretely visualizes the condition of his patientusing the metaphors invested in the multivalent image of theflower-bent, withered, or faded.

INTERPRETATION WITHIN THE METAPHORHealing with images occurs through an interpretation and rein-

terpretation of the patient's condition within the metaphors chartedout along the healing geography. It is through such metaphors ofexperience, and the experiencing of metaphorical images, that thepatient is healed. Similar to Ekstein's (1966) advice to deal with apatient's subjective reality by way of "interpretation within the met-aphor," the shaman presents certain images that speak metaphoricallyto, and about, the patient's illness. Like the Western psychothera-pist, the shaman chooses particular images, "because they accu-rately reflect [the patient's] inner psychological reality and the stateof his ego" (Shafh 1972). Once forests are paired with subliminalsecrets, and life choices matched with mountain paths, the shamancan then work with the patient's experiential condition on that met-aphorical level.This is seen in a Limbu shaman's handling of a father-son rela-tionship, as reported by Sagant (1976:82). Sagant writes that an ad-olescent became ill and called a shaman, or phedangma,to conduct,in the name of his father, a ritual that shamans conduct to determinea person's vocation. During this divination, the shaman journeys tothe mythical "domain of Nahangma," where there are three paths:the left path is that of the bijuwa (a shamanlike priest); the middlepath, that of a layman, or head of the house; and on the right, thepath of aphedangma(shaman) (Sagant 1976:82). Sagant's informanttold him that when the shaman came to the three paths, he "re-marked that the paths of the father and son were not the same, thatthey must be separated or the son would die. The former had thepath of the layman; the latter was on the phedangma'spath" (Sagant


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HEALINGTHROUGH MAGES 2991976:82). The image of the forked road both crystallizes the inter-personal dynamics tacitly embedded in the father-son relationshipand suggests an objective resolution to the patient's malaise. Similarto Ericksoniantherapy, the shaman communicates indirectly to thepatient througha metaphorical system, suggesting alternative waysof thinking about certain experiences (Gordon 1982:117).

MAGICAL MIMESISLevi-Strauss (1950) and others (Dow 1986; Sandner 1979) haveobserved that the shaman provides a salubrious mythic model

which gives form and meaning to his patient's inchoate malaise (asin the example above). Such models can transform experientialstates as well. The cultural myth acted out by the shaman is the pa-tient's reality; any manipulation of the ritual narrationchanges thisreality. Through the creation and transformation of imaginativerealities, the shaman simultaneously effects a transformation in theexperiential reality of the patient. I would liken this process to thatof mimesis, s derived from classical literary theory: an author pre-sents a reality by vividly (and selectively) describing its features.10?As for the shaman, he magically transforms the old reality (of ill-ness) and creates a new one (of health) through the presentation ofconcrete, sensory images.This process is highlighted in one account of illness and healingtold by a formerpatient of two Limbu shamans (Sagant 1978:245-246;my translation and analysis). This Limbu man told Sagant thatonce, when he was sick, his family arrangedfor a shaman to performa chicken sacrifice to ThebaSam, the spirit of the ancestors, in thehopes of retrieving the patient's lost soul. In order to carry out thissacrifice,the shaman first had to travel along a mythic road to ThebaSam'scastle; inside the castle he would then offerthe chicken in ex-change for the soul.

During this ceremony, which lasted late into the night, the sha-man apparently dozed off. Seeing this, the patient smacked the sha-man alongside the head. The shaman woke with a start, yelling andflailing his arms. After the spectators finally calmed him down, theshaman said that the ceremony had "misfired."He reportedthat hehad arrived at the castle, passed the doors, and was offering thechickento Theba am."He had seen my spirit," the patient recalled,"but at the moment when I hit him, all the doors closed, and my


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spirit remained trapped inside" (Sagant 1978:245-246). The sha-man's spirit, however, managed to escape hurriedly.In the following days, with his soul trapped in ThebaSam's castle,the patient fell gravely ill: "I could no longer open my eyes. I no

longer heard anything. I did not eat for two days" (Sagant 1978:245;note the metaphoric parallel between the closing of the castle andthe impermeability of the patient's body). Finally, another shamanwas called to perform the same ceremony. He traveled the sameroad, arrived at ThebaSam's castle, entered its doors, and saw thechicken left by the previous shaman. He was then able to retrievethe patient's spirit. At dawn, the shaman said that in his dreams hesaw the patient ascend toward the mountain crests, confirming thatthe patient's spirit had returned. That same morning, the patientrecalls, he suddenly felt better and gradually regained his health.Thus, by weaving mimetic realities out of mythic images, the sha-mans determine that the state of the patient's health hinges on hisspirit's incarceration or release from ThebaSam's castle.

SYMBOLIC PERFORMANCEDuring the curing ceremony, the shaman catalyzes core human

experiences-such as the release of chains or the return of a soul-through behaviors performed along the visceral expanses of the pa-tient's subjective experience. The shaman, above all, acts throughmovements and images, transforming the symbolic into the real.Toward the end of a Kham-Magars curing ceremony, the shamanpurports to wash "impurities" and "evil omens" away:If the shaman determines that the soul has fled because of aggravation, then theevil must be "washed away".... The figure of a demon on horseback is made ofdough and painted yellow to symbolize its evil nature. At night, the shaman's as-sistant puts the demon in a tiny boat on the river, where it floats away. Meanwhile,the shaman sits in the house beating his drum, and he describes step by step theitinerary of the horse and its rider until it reaches Chumktutya bridge (about tenmiles downriver). The evil has been eradicated. [Watters 1975:150]Once again, the shaman acts within a detailed geographical scena-rio in order to transform the patient's experience of selfhood. As thetiny boat of demonic evil floats down the stream of images, so ex-periences defined as evil are purged from the symbolic matrix of thepatient's self.It is this combination of physical performance and metaphoricalmovement through geographical space that makes the shaman's ac-


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tions so efficacious (Allen 1974:17). For example, the Bhuji shamanperformsa ceremony in which the patient climbs onto a winnowingtray and is then boosted up by members of his family into the "sky"while the shaman dances underneath (Hitchcock 1967:154). Fromthe ceiling a carved wooden model representing the sun and themoon is suspended; below this image hangs a lanceolate leaf of theSonchampa tree. While being bounced up and down, the patientbites into the leaf, breakingit into two. Afterward,the shaman ques-tions the patient:Did you see the sun and moon?Yes, I saw.Did you see the stars in the sky?I saw.Did you climb the nine steps?I climbed.Did you climb over the obstruction?I climbed. [Hitchcock 1967:154]Thus, through a metonymic ascent into the heavens, the patientclimbs over the debilitating "obstruction."Through such performativeacts graphed onto the physical land-scape, the patient's world is changed. Paths are blazed, souls re-turned, evil impurities washed away. The myriad formsand folds ofthe healing geography are revealed and revived.

RESTRUCTURING THE SYMBOLIC LANDSCAPE

During his medicinal voyage, the shaman operates on the sym-bolic landscape he encounters, restructuringits complex of images.On one metaphoricallevel the shaman acts within the symbolic con-tours of the healing geography; on another, he works within the ex-perientialmatrixof the patient's self. As one Tamang shaman notes:When you arrive to cure someone, it is like a chain there, a place of chains. As yougo you must say, "Oh phamo!ook behind me, look in front of me, look from yourheart-mind,I have come to this place. This person is sick in such and such a way."You ask them to reveal those places, to release those iron chains. You say, "let's goand reveal all those ne[places]." [Holmberg 1980:314]As with the Tamang shaman's visit to "the neof the closed mouths,"previously hidden (and perhaps repressed) domains of experiencesare revealed. The domain of chains, simultaneously visualized andcast off, has been transformed.


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Just as chains are released, so souls captive in the underworld arefreed. Returning to the Magar shaman's journey beyond "theWaters of Forgetfulness," we find the shaman continuing in hissearch for the patient's soul:Finally, he comes to the place of the soul's captivity where he gives a shout oftriumph and begins to bargain with the gods of the underworld, imploring them tofree the soul. Finally, with the soul in his possession, the shaman returns by thesame route. As he approaches the village he cries out, "I've captured the soul andI bring it for you!" [Watters 1975:146]Here the shaman spins a web of images based on the plight of thepatient. He saves the errant soul from the Waters of Forgetfulness,reintegrating it with the village at the core of the patient's life.When Holmberg asked one Tamang shaman why his revelatoryvisions come at Daksin Kali, a gorge exiting out of the southern partof the Kathmandu valley, the shaman replied:There is a great god there. Below you open up all the la, all the earth is opened upand taken-the Ganges, Banaras. From there all the places to the west are openedup and taken .... After you reach Daksin Kali you lift up and take [off]. There theeyes are closed briefly and you see what happens. After that you come back up tothe village; all the villages are put in order. Then you go right on up to uisamebeyhul[in Tibet]; you go up to midspace. Beyhul is a ne; it is the ne of the bombos .... [Inthe hrikap], you must recount all the hills, you meditate on all those hills. [Holm-berg 1980:304]

Passing through the gorge that pierces the valley, the shaman is,to use Michael Taussig's (1987:200) word, an "imagician" whotransforms the experiential world of his patient. All the earth isopened up and taken; villages are put in order; hills are recountedand meditated upon. Images are explored, articulated, ordered, andrevitalized. It is movement and medicine at the same time; a magi-cal flight from illness into health.

DOMAINS OF TRANSFORMATIONSince each image the shaman conjures up during his flight is

predicated on a certain domain of experience, the shaman can movethe patient through experiences, as represented by these images.When the shaman flies from forest to inner-mountain snow field, healso shifts from one domain of experience to another. Pictorializedvividly by the shaman, these images become actively lived by thepatient." The patient is thus guided, experientially and affectively,through this transformative stream of images.12


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Many of these images possess an active sentiment of "liminality"as Victor Turner defines it: "a fructile chaos, a storehouse of possi-bilities, not a random assemblage but a striving after new formsandstructures" (1986:41). In his journeys the Nepali shaman often vis-its cliffs, crossroads, cremation grounds, river edges, and the "jun-gle." The Magar shaman has a wild goat stave lead him to the placeof an errant soul, "usually a graveyard or swampy area" (Watters1975:82). Searching for his patient's lost soul, a Tamang shamansings of where the soul may lodge:Above a great rockabove a great treeabove a great cliffabove a great scar in the earthabove a crevasse.... [Holmberg 1980:295]

Liminal images such as these are more than symptomseflectingthetransitory nature of the patient's situation or signifying his debili-tating sickness. The scars and crevasses exposed in the feverishearth of the shaman's visionary consciousness also serve as moti-vational forces which catalyzea liminal, transformativestage in thesick person. By finding the soul in the twilight of liminality, withina domain of subjective transformation,the shaman snares it within,"a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideasand relations may arise" (Turner 1967:97). Repeatedly invoked,such liminal images delodge the patient from the domain of sicknessand steerhim toward one markedby health. "Men become the met-aphor predicated upon them" (Fernandez 1974), and by being en-capsulated in images of liminality, the patient himself becomestransformative.These liminal niches also help the shaman to deconstruct the pat-tern of malaise defining the patient. Once the shaman uproots im-ages previously enshrouded in a pathological terrain and upsetstheir malignant hold on the patient, he begins his reconstructive re-turn to the village. Once all the earth is broken up, all the hills arethen put in order. A new landscape is woven together, a terrainnowsurveyedwithin the matrices of a healing geography.

CONCLUSIONTo summarize the dynamics of shamanic healing outlined above,I offerone final, epilogic image. It is the image of the shaman who,


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as a weaver and worker of images, creates experiential mosaicsthrough word, metaphor, and symbolic action. It is the myth of the"imagician" who shapes and shifts the realities of his audiencethrough imagery culled from the everyday worlds in which they live,and of the healer who heals by traveling through the morbid hinter-lands of confusion, distress, and closed mouths. Opaquely reflectedin this image are ourselves, forjust as the shaman images the patientthrough the mountains and graveyards of their countryside, so ourhealers and diviners move us through the symbolic terrain of ourown experience.

NOTESAcknowledgments.wish to thankJacques Macquet, Kenneth Lincoln, Bonnie Glass-Coffin,

Molly McGinn, and the two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts ofthis article. Special thanks to Tracy McGarry andJohn Kennedy for their invaluable assis-tance and encouragement.1I use the term "Nepali Shamanism" categorically in order to denote the shamanic com-

plex found among severalTibeto-Burman tribal peoples who live in villages on the southernside of the Himalayas in Nepal: namely, Tamang, Kami, Sherpa, Limbu, Thulung Rai, Gu-rung,and Magar. Although each of these groups bearsa way of life distinct from one another,I believe that their shamanic practicesare similarenough to merita collective analysis of theirhealing strategies.

2Iwrite "may mean" because the present literatureon shamanic healing in Nepal-which,likethe anthropological iteratureat large, lacksany systematic data on the individualpatient'sexperiencesof illness and healing-only enables us to make inferencesnto what the patientsactually experience during the healing ceremony. Thus, while this paper, being primarily ananalysisof the relevantliterature,does not include an in-depth inquiry into how patients sub-jectively experienceand interpretthe images evoked by the shaman, I do plan to collect suchdata throughsubsequent field research.3Foranthropologicalresearchon shamanic uses of imagery, see Peters and Price-Williams(1980), Noll (1985), and Merkur (1985). For researchconcerning the use of imagery in psy-chotherapyand other healing practices, see Watkins (1976), Achterberg (1985), and Singerand Pope (1978).

4My orientation here is informed by that of Foucault:For us, the human body defines, by natural right, the space of origin and of distribution ofdisease: a space whose lines, volumes, surfaces, and routes are laid down, in accordancewith a now familiar geometry, by the anatomical atlas. But this order of the solid, visiblebody is only one way-in all likelihood neither the first, nor the most fundamental-inwhich one spatializes disease. There have been, and will be, other distributions of illness.[1973:3]5In his dissertation on Gurung shamanism, Mumford (1985:273) provides a "Trail Map"

markingthe road used by the shamans for guiding the soul to the land of the dead. Othergeographicalvoyages-albeit of a more concrete nature-include the Huichol's peyote hunt(Furst 1968;Myerhoff 1974) and religious pilgrimages, as analyzed by Turner (1974).

6The mesasof North Coastal Peruvian healers contain similar symbolic maps (Joralemon1984;Sharon 1978).


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7RenatoRosaldo (1980:16) noted a similar phenomenon occurring among the Ilongots ofthe Philippine Islands, who, like the Nepali mountain peoples, map "excursions into thepast" onto the landscape. This is a process well documented for the "Dreamtime" of someAustralian tribes as well (see Elkin 1946 and Myers 1986, for example).

8See Peters (1982:80-81) and Sagant (1976:68-70) for personal accounts of such "retreatsinto the forest."9Sagant (1969:110) writes that one Limbu shaman beckoned to Tamphunga as follows:"You, Tamphunga, whereveryou may be, in the rivulets, in the forest, in the irrigatedor dryfields, let the spirit of the dead go."l?See Aristotle's Poeticsand Auerbach (1953)."This movement through domains of experience may provoke a cathartic response in the

patient (cf. Scheff 1979). Whatever emotional complexes are embedded within the dark for-ests and "the Hidden Country" (Hofer 1974:177) of the Himalayas, they are evoked whenthe shaman images them, catalyzing the patient's experience of these potentially distressfulemotional processes. Yet since the shaman is working on a metaphorical level-ostensiblytraveling througha healing geography abstracted from the patient's condition-the dramatispersonae would be "properlydistanced" in the sense that the patient is both observer andparticipant in the shaman's acts. The action would be effective, and emotions sufficientlydischarged,without the drama cutting too close to home (Scheff 1979).

12A vivid illustration of this process comes from a Cuna etiologic-and thus therapeutic-chant that describes the mythic stages involved in the progressive development of "mentalillness," wherein shamanistic spirits encounter a series of villages, such as "the village of ob-scurity"and "the village of transformations"(Severi 1982). Kapferer(1983), meanwhile, ob-servesthat Sinhalese exorcisms transformpatients' identities by having the patient's "inner"experienceparallel the transformations that occur in the objective structure of the rite.

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