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A rough draft of the spiritual autobiography of Joseph B Wilson. The history that lead to Toteg Tribe.
Copyright 2003 by Joseph B Wilson
- Slowly, but steadily, TOTEG grew again until we had about a dozen people attending regularly.
In the 1970s I'd read Mircea Eliade's "SHAMANISM: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy" several
times. It is the kind of book I like, academic, and thorough, and with a marvelous bibliography.
While I found the information, descriptions, and explanations to be compelling, I also wanted more.
That book was never intended to be a "how to" manual, and I wondered how to experiment with the
general areas that Eliade talked about.
In the early 1980s, after we'd been doing what we were doing in TOTEG for a while, Joanna
brought home a copy of Michael Harner's "The Way of the Shaman". I read it through, and was
fascinated. I understood that Harner was trying to provide a general system that one could use to
explore the Otherworlds without having to adopt some foreign culture's worldview. This fit in quite
well with what I had been trying to do with TOGEG. While I understood his need to give various
examples from the indigenous cultures he lived and studied with, I also saw that he was careful to
prescribe only those basic techniques that were shared by many unrelated cultures. I saw his
purpose as being to make a bare skeleton of techniques available on which people could put their
own cultural orientations.
I read the book two more times, then decided that I was going to give his theory a fair trial. I
decided that in order to do that I would have to follow his course as closely as possible, without
picking and choosing this or that.
I went out and bought a 16-inch REMO Pre-Tuned Hand Drum (it cost $16 in those days, and is
about twice that now) and prepared it following his instructions in Appendix A, and also bought a
pair of the Latin Percussion "Professional Maraca's" (about $40 in those days, I've no idea what
they cost now) that he advised in that same section. Since I wouldn't have anyone to drum for me
during my experiments I spent quite a bit of time practicing with the drum and finally made my own
drum cassette tape with 45-minutes of continuous drumming in the speed he recommended.
I read the book one more time. Then chose the day when I would do my first experiment. This was
a time when I would be completely alone in the house. I unplugged the telephones, locked the
doors, stripped naked (because I'm most comfortable that way) turned on the tape, lay down like
he suggested in Chapter 2, and mentally began searching for my entrance to the Lowerworld. It
wasn't long before I found it and found myself traveling down a spiral tunnel or cave. This first time I
didn't go any farther than the exit on the other side, where I stood on a ledge looking out at a kind
of plane that had a river running through the middle of it, a path meandering beside it, and a
mountain in the distance. I forced myself to retrace my steps and come back to where I started,
then sat up, turned off the tape, and contemplated what I'd done. I was pretty pleased with the
results.
So, Okay! That was cool. Then I decided that since I was already used to doing ceremonies of
different sorts that I'd plunge ahead and incorporate his suggestions in Chapter 4. I rewound the
tape and started it again, picked up my rattles, put on a sleep shade so I would be in darkness,
and began shaking them saluting the rising sun and feeling it's rays come into and strengthen me,
the four directions and feeling the life and energy of growing things, both plant and animal, the sky,
and the earth, and then I began to dance around in a circle.
I felt like an absolute idiot!
Thoughts intruded on me "My god, look at me, jumping around naked like some kind of fool,
suppose somebody looks in the window?" I was really embarrassed for myself!
But I ignored those thoughts and kept it up. As I danced I felt myself traveling to the place that I'd
chosen as my entrance to the Lowerworld. I could see the landscape as I went by, first walking
along a path in a meadow, then going through a small woods, then crossing a wooden bridge over
a stream, and coming up to a large oak tree, sitting beside a cave entrance. When I arrived at the
entrance to the cave I lay down in the middle of the rug, exhausted, and stepped into the entrance
to the cave and began my journey downwards. The journey through the cave was relatively
uneventful. A few twists and turns, a few large boulders in my way that I had to go around, and in
one case go under, and finally I came to the same ledge I'd been to in my first journey.
This time I came down off the ledge and followed the path down this mountain side onto the plane.
I wanted to explore, and followed what appeared to be a well worn pathway. For a long time I didn't
see much of anything except the landscape, vegetation, trees, grasses, the path, and the river. I
walked along the path following the river for a long ways until the path lead into a grove of trees
beside the river. I followed it in, and found a rowboat tethered to one of the trees. I got in the boat
and continued my journey downstream. After a while the boat came to rest on a sandy beach and I
saw that the path began again, so I got out of the boat and followed the path.
This time it was leading up the side of the mountain I had seen from a distance when I first stepped
into the Lowerworld. I followed it up higher and higher until I finally reached the top of the mountain.
