The Mystical Christ: Regardless of the diversionary mumbo-jumbo entrapping of magic and religion, the central theory to the shamanic philosophy of the Upper Paleolithic Master of Animals was the solipsistic theory of the God-man: that the world is a dream, the vatic-shamanic personality the dreamer, and, consequently, that the mental states of the shaman are the engine driving the course of events in the real world.
Man had been born with what appears to be a genetically predetermined illusion of centrality with respect to his environment; a psycho-affective predilection which, no doubt, had been fostered by the reality editing behavior of the nursing female. The personal psycho-affective conflicts of the God-king Osiris in historic times, for instance, arose from the conflict between the king and his political rivals. At the cosmic level, the king’s travails translate into the conflict between the forces of good and evil, dramatized in the sacred play of the Osirian mystery cult as the conflict between the god Osiris and the devil Seth. The resolution of the shaman’s private psycho-affective conflicts translates on the grand cosmic scale into resolution of the thematic good versus evil conflict of history. But “good” is not an absolute defined independent of a personal perspective. The shaman’s perspective, however, is the perspective of God, and God is absolute.
Every religious culture is to a significant extent a millenarian cargo cult. The magical and religious culture of Upper Paleolithic man had been in response to the crisis of his time: the gradual desiccation of the fertile, game rich plains and the consequent increasing difficulties in making a living by a wholly hunting-predatory lifestyle. As it has been usual in history, magic and religious techniques of adaptation had been man’s first resort in the face of crisis. But when, as it is usual, magic and religion failed, technological innovation came to the rescue. Irrigation technology was developed to boost agricultural productivity. Human population swelled in the banks of the great rivers of the Fertile Crescent. The shaman’s magic claimed the credit, and the shaman, in an upbeat mood, changed his address from the humble cave residence to the Pharaoh’s Palace.
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