-:- little vision tricksters -:-
-:- spooks through the ages -:-
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If we are to map spooks as agents - either internal to human psychology and neurology or external - of evolved human change and as models to aid humans in understanding those evolved changes, we need to provide some kind of framework for this map. It seems to me that the best framework for this is the history of human evolution, both anthropological and cultural.
We can envisage a group of Homo erectus individuals living on the African plains some two million years ago - tall, strong and with flat foreheads. They may well have used some form - presumably fairly simple - of spoken language, but they certainly used fire and tools. Evidence of this can be found over numerous sites where they regularly visited or inhabited, and consists mainly of what appear to be old hearths and handaxes. The handaxes in particular fit firmly with even weight in the hands of a modern human, but there are also a small number of handaxes which appear to be too large for practical use. Were they ritual items?
It may be at this time, as mankind began to transform from a scavenging to a hunting and gathering animal, that he first became dimly aware of spooks. As his nervous system began to transform into that of a symbolically-thinking modern human, he may have begun the first steps on the road to animistic thinking. He may have become aware of creator spooks within his environment, responsible for the various aspects of the world.
That is to say, early man may well have become aware of his own nervous system within the world and its own creative power in being able to shape and form that world and that this manifested itself as the earliest creator-animist spooks.
Soon, within this incipient spiritual framework may well have grown a respect for the natural environment in which he lived. Having externalised his own creative power, mankind now began to culture a reverence for this power, endowed as it was with apparent magic. This notion is expressed most strongly in the function of the magic spook, and all that remained for man to do was engage relationally with this magic power in one of several ways, and by doing so, actively engage in the creative and transforming power that he himself held and still holds (*9).
The first way, and possibly the earliest, was the method demonstrated by the Wunambal people: to hold spooks as simultaneously creators and representers of the landscape itself (creator spooks again, but also spooks of land custodianship). The wandjina were inherent within the landscape and were not merely metaphors for it. Thus, the magic of art depiction could begin, and by drawing the likeness of a spook on a surface, the artist was depicting mirrored aspects of both his environment and his own nature. The magic power was thus concentrated within the depiction and thus contained, so that it could be directed. Mankind thus became the custodian of his environment.
The second way was the one taken by the Yanomami: to see spooks not as the manifestation of the landscape, but of shamanic power, thus becoming shamanic allies. Mankind's understanding of his own nature thus expanded as his creative and destructive power expanded. In particular, the evolution of agriculture and the requirement for the newly planted fields to be protected gave rise to a need for protection, and, ultimately warfare.
The third way was the one taken by the Japanese: to be at the mercy of the whims and desires of the spooks themselves. This concentrated mankind's understanding of himself, not in terms of his own power, but in terms of the (far greater) power of the natural world. Thus, a deep reverence and awe evolved for the natural world and its sacred power - the spooks became sacred essences. Even today the Japanese have a powerful connection to their natural environment, as well as the kami which continually inspire them.
And it is here, at the point when mankind still had a fairly firm grip on the magical and creative processes of nature, that things began to flip. It is as if, with the advent of agriculture and the beginnings of the group-oriented cultures, the self-sufficient power of the hunter-gatherer society declined, and with it went the original spooks of creative power.
The Aboriginal spooks of custodianship began to evolve into spirits that marked tribal totems and tribal boundaries. As the need arose to demarcate the land into portions owned by particular groups of people, boundary spooks began to arise. These reflected no more than mankind's new and evolving need to have his own space where his gardens could grow and his culture could flourish, but it meant that he was hemmed in by invisible borders over which he may not have been able to cross. He became subject to, at first, laws of trespass, and later, laws of transgression.
Similarly from the shamanic allies evolved the makers of mischief. Mankind's belief in his own individual intrinsic power declined to be replaced by a creative power that was community based. Thus the former shamanic spooks now became causers of havoc, as if the power of sorcery formerly rooted in man had been cut free and was let loose in the world to do its own will.
And sacred essences turned into makers of prosperity who could be entreated from the great awe of nature into bringing riches and fertility to mankind's increasingly humble lot. Throughout all this transformation, some vestige of the old, fantastic power of the original spooks was remembered in terms of the ancestor spirits. This was now a belief that essentially said that although mankind was not in himself all-powerful and creative, he would inherit something of that power after he died, by becoming an ancestor spirit. Thus, the former individual creativity of the hunter-gatherer was subsumed into the pool of long-dead ancestors.
As this occurred, mankind also experienced what might be termed as the Rise of the Gods, in which former spooks rose to some kind of majesty entirely divorced from their previous, human-power-linked existence. They became at one and the same time, makers of mischief, makers of prosperity, makers of magic, ancestors, creators and allies. But mankind no longer resided at the centre of his power, and their discreteness from the natural environment and from human existence began to block further understanding to human experiences.
Boundary spooks became moral guardians, makers of prosperity became goddesses of fertility, and mischief makers became sky gods and earth devils. Civilised and city state life caused our psyches to flip, so that we were no longer centrally focussed on ourselves. We looked completely outward for power and the deep nervous system connections between humanity and the natural world as a map of human existence were beginning to erode.
But there was more to come. With the rise of the Gods, the spooks began to decline. City states and townships spread across the globe, and with them people migrated. Memories of old ways of life, of former inhabitants, and former spooks now haunted the wild places of the natural environment. Not only did we no longer possess the magical power to control our own destinies, but the lands that were formerly our home were often teeming with malevolent spooks with whom we had little or no connection.
In our modern world, even the Gods now seem threatened by the onslaught of technology, such that it seems the spooks will disappear entirely. But this is not the case.
Mankind's racial memory is extremely long, and in cultures such as the West where the reign of the Gods has risen, and in turn has begun to fall, the rise of new spooks has been observed. These new spooks have begun to link up with cultures such as the Japanese where the centrality of spooks never ceased, and the interaction of these two cultural elements is beginning to produce a revolution in human spiritual thinking. It is at once, a leap forward into the future, and a step back into the past.
For the twentieth century saw, if nothing else, the rise of the aliens.
(c) Bruce Rimell, June 2005
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