• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Eliade’s work was based on reading various literary texts and field reports. Subsequent field work demonstrated that possession, trance, and ascent-as well as the other characteristics of shamanism-are independent variables, even though they correlate at various times and places. Though various techniques of shamanism diffuse historically, not all shamanism can be shown to be historically related.

Ascent as a Marker for ASC

AS EARLY AS Daniel, the theme of night visions becomes important. Daniel 7 announces itself as both a dream and a vision. This compares with the dream of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 2:1; 4:6-7 and the subsequent revelations which are called visions (ḥâzōn Dan 8:1; mâr’ch 10:1). Daniel receives “visions of his head on his bed,” that he writes down. Most scholars have interpreted this usage to indicate a revelatory dream, which was written down afterwards.

This formulation also can be found in the early parts of Enoch:

This is the book of the words for righteousness and the chastisement of the eternal watchers, in accordance with how the Holy and Great One had commanded in this vision. I saw in my sleep what I now speak with my tongue of flesh (italics added) and the breath of the mouth which the Great One has given to man (so that) he (man) may speak with it-and (so that) he may have understanding with his heart as he (the Great One) has created and given it to man. (1 En 14:2-3)

Enoch too receives his ascent vision in his sleep and then communicates it afterwards. In the Testament of Levi, the first vision is accomplished with a spirit of understanding. Later, sleep falls upon the seer, perhaps as in Genesis 28:12, and he experiences ascent. Third Enoch begins with a scene of great mourning for the destruction of the Temple and continues to an experience of ascent. In the Apocalypse of Abraham, Genesis 15, where a deep sleep falls upon Abraham, forms the background to the story. The apocalypse retells the “covenant between the pieces.” It interprets Abraham’s sleep as a waking vision:

And it came to pass when I heard the voice pronouncing such words to me that I looked this way and that. And behold there was no breath of man. And my spirit was amazed, and my soul fled from me. And I became like a stone, and fell face down upon the earth, for there was no longer strength in me to stand upon the earth. And while I was still face down on the ground, I heard the voice speaking…. (Apoc Ab 10)

Here, the apocalypticist has interpreted the Hebrew word tardemah in Genesis 15, usually translated as “deep sleep,” as purely a daytime trance. His body was completely incapacitated but he saw the arrival of the angel and then used the sacrificed birds to ascend. It is conceivable that an exegete would have found these connections but why would the exegete then translate the experience of Abraham into a first person narrative? He must be relating it to his own knowledge, either personally or from another adept. Although this state is described as a waking vision, we may understand these changes in the same way as dreams. Naturally occurring states of consciousness can be understood in religiously important ways in the correct context. Altered states of consciousness must be stimulated for most people while others just occur naturally.

The native understanding of the phenomenon in Jewish culture is not so much “rapture” as explicitly “ecstasy” in its technical sense (ek + stasis, meaning “standing outside”), as the narrator states that his soul fled. He means this to be understood as a non-normal and religiously altered state of consciousness. He further characterizes the physical trauma with a description of a seizure. The terminologies of dream vision, spirit possession, and soul flight are used interchangeably here to indicate that the experience was non-normal, a RASC. It would be realistic to consider that ecstasy and mysticism ascents were being practiced and that they were expressed as