TOTEM AND WALKING-PART I, ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASPECTS

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There are many researchers who have dedicated themselves to investigating into totemism. The following list falls short: Sigmund Freud, James George Frazer, Bronislaw Malinowski, Andrew Lang, John Ferguson McLennan, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt, Franz Uri Boas, J. Long, Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Alexander A. Goldenweiser, Wilhelm Stekel, and as one might expect, there are discrepancies between some of their hypothetical considerations and the conclusions they reached; however, I must thank them all for their efforts and intense work, because they allowed me to outline a new perspective that has contact with their research. The central part of my thesis lies in the origin of Totemism and the observation (contemplation) that the Totem was a spiritual effect that was generated in the transition from nomadism to sedentary life; in other words, I consider that this representation was related to the natural activity of the human being’s journey, an exposition (hypothesis) that I will present below, in this first part which is a study of this relationship, in its anthropological aspects, and later, to complement it with a second part, which is analyzed from a psychological perspective and interpretation.

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To address our project, I would like to say a few words about the difference between the spiritual and religion, as far as I am concerned. In several past posts I have conveyed what I have personally experienced as I walk. Its effects are far-reaching and I believe it is no longer necessary to repeat them; if not of the knowledge of all humanity, then of a significant part.

However, I have failed to clarify some ideas about what I have been able to ascertain about the soul and the spiritual, for it also exerts a relevant stimulus, and perhaps the most important, for it produces a generalization, in turn, about all the other functions of the human being.

I would like to mention at this point, on this level of the blog, that when I use the word “spiritual” I am not referring exclusively to the religious concept; of course they are intimately related, but they are not equivalent. Religion is an evolved phase of Magic and Totemism, as James George Frazer rightly mentions, and spirituality is the sensitive and dynamic force, which escapes the rational and the senses for its quantification, dimensions and power, through which the human being develops certain forms and religious aspects, but also dozens of other functions and soul operations, which we can only achieve with this ethereal energy, which constitutes the being.

On the other hand, the soul, like the other intangible forms of being, is always in motion, not to mention the body and other physical and material parts of the human being. Everything indicates that the soul does not die when the body dies, and the spirit remains in a latent state; however, these last two statements belong to matters that have not yet been scientifically proven.

After these clarifications, I continue with our central theme. The Totem is a “material” representation of an animal, vegetable or thing, which is the object of veneration by a primitive group of human beings. It can be a three-dimensional or two-dimensional figure, which bears a resemblance to what it represents or can bear no resemblance at all. The Totem is not a fetish because it is not a unique object, but is widespread in the species of animal or vegetable or was selected as such; nor is it an idol because it does not represent a god or goddess.

The socio-anthropological conception of totem is the image of an animal, vegetable or thing, which a group of people, large or small, be it a tribe, clan, etc., value and venerate for various characteristics, and it is linked in an almathetic or spiritual way with all the members of that human group. Different categories of Totems have been defined, but the one that should really interest us is the one that belongs to a whole social group (Tribe, Clan, etc.), with the Totem by Sex and the Individual coming second in the present exhibition.

In primitive peoples, two characteristics, among others, are important: one, the totem is considered the progenitor of the group, and two, the soul relationship makes it, for all individual cases, that if something happens to the totem, the same thing will happen to the person; that is, if the animal dies, the person will die soon after, and conversely also, if the person dies, the animal will die. In certain specific cases this relationship is also extrapolated to the entire human group on the totem pole.

Totemism in its historical development has manifested itself in 3 cultural spheres: spiritual, social and religious, the latter being the last phase of it. From our approach, its spiritual practice was the most important, giving rise to the other two human manifestations.

From the point of view of its configuration, both social and religious, Totemism is a socio-religious cultural institution that has left its primitive traces in the later universal religious formations and organisations (institutions) within its rituals and dogmatic forms, so that even today, we find social customs and rituals that are reliable – or at least have a relationship that is easily identified as being correlated – to both the social and religious environment, in our day. There is an analogy between the gifts and gifts obtained by the totemic relationship (animal, vegetable or thing) in remote times, and those granted by the gods in the current religions, in full force: the cure of diseases, the achievement of divine help in dozens of human activities, positive and negative omens, etc.

There are also other definitions, according to the disciplinary specialty, which maintain elements common to the former, but which have other approaches and perspectives, for analysis.

One such element in common with these other definitions is that the social group invariably adopts the name of the chosen animal. Thus we have the “Wolf”, “Deer”, “Eagle”, “Hawk”, “Beaver” tribe, etc. One way of observing the spiritual impact that this animal imitation brought with it, is the adoption of the name of the animal to that of the human group. There is no doubt that the name we bear – either because it was given to us or because we chose it voluntarily – implies part of the essence of our being, for we identify ourselves fully in the course of time, intrinsically with it, we form a unity, a unity of the self with our name, a conscious but fundamentally subliminal identity, which is none other than the union of the soul with the self. The name is part of the human soul. This is analysed by Stekel and described as the “Compulsion of (the) Name”: The crucial and determining importance of a person’s name in their unconscious inclinations and behavior.

Everything indicates that Totemism is a universal stage of evolution through which the human being has passed, so this system is found in a very wide diversity of peoples, from the most remote times, so it is considered an archaic (pristine) institution, generalized in humanity, and for the same reason, Psychology considers it as part of the collective unconscious. (Future PostTHE WALKING AND THE ARCHETYPES-THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS). Surely several archetypes emanate from it – which we could not analyze here – or it is built within the archetype “Magic” (Post WALKING AND THE ARCHETYPE “MAGIC”. PART I) as a human-spiritual need (perhaps also as a reminiscence) and other elements of an unconscious and instinctive kind.

Thus, totemism is a purely spiritual institution -or system- through which early human groups revered a totem (animal, vegetable or thing), usually engendering a social organization around that totem, and which very subsequently led to religion.

Any definition of a cultural institution, such as the Totem, must consider in part the explanation of its origin and the causes of its genesis. The definitions we have given previously – taking into account the disciplinary (socio-anthropological) approach – incorporate some of this; however, I would like to be more explicit, since this will allow us to find and understand its own process of evolution in order to accept it as an important phase of personal and group development, which will allow us to glimpse part of its hereditary images (transitive, transmissible through inheritance), both in behavior and in current customs, in all of humanity.

The totem is a collective projection and starts as an imitation and results in the “entrenchment” of the archetype “Magic”, when the human being starts to transform from a nomadic to a sedentary being. The spirituality projected on the chosen totem allows the community that worships and values it to overcome certain habits rooted in its being, such as the eternal need – like others – for nomadism. This is a natural – or forced – transition from nomadism to sedentarism, which inclines him to the practice of totemism, imitating the chosen totem animal, and mainly in his posture and walk. In this respect, we must bear in mind, for this consideration, that in its pristine origins of totemism, the Totems that were selected (chosen and used) in a totemic way, were only animals; This was the 1st phase of totemism, the Totem-animal, and later – in the following phases – vegetables were incorporated (Post WALKING AND CAPSICUM; Future Post THE WALKING OF THE ANCIENT MAYAS AND THEIR TOTEM “CHILE”; Future Post HE WALKING OF THE ANCIENT MAYAS AND THEIR TOTEM “CORN”) and “inanimate” things, in general. We commented in Post THE WALKING AND THE ARCHETYPE “MAGIC” that: “The displacement that is achieved through the archetype Magic, the soul or spirit of the individual – or group – that is involved in the process of archetypal images, usually participated disguising itself with animal or vegetable clothing, with or without a mask, and with (dance) rhythms and movements that resembled the animals that he wanted and needed to be present in the ceremony or magic ritual, for this reason there is always a relationship between the clothing (or the cave painting we mentioned earlier) which is generally called totemism and the archetype of ‘Magic'”.

Totemism is a spiritual system that originated from the need and transformation that human beings had in their transition from nomadism to sedentary life. A thesis that no one has analyzed… at least I think so.

The element that we are interested in analyzing as part of that archetypal genesis, is the innate walk in the human being, and that places us in a perspective that starts two million years ago (Post HOMO-ITER : MAN WALKER, PART I, Post HOMO-ITER: MAN WALKER. PART II) when HOMO SAPIENS stood up and started that innate process, walking only on his 2 lower extremities.

Totemism is not only important for the knowledge of the history of primitive man, but also for the understanding of the present history of present day man, and above all for “programming” the history through which the man of the future will have to pass, walking on foot; it is an intermediate step that the human being takes from the stage of Magic to that of Religion; it is the magical ascendant that, in different regions of the world, transforms to give entrance to most of his spiritual needs.

Totemism, without becoming a religion, laid the foundation for the conformation of all the religions of the world, as their spiritual preamble. It was one of the institutions, in addition to magic, witchcraft, spiritualism, and others, into which animism (belief in the soul) was projected, and into which it took shape and structure to lead to religion, the animistic form in which humanity now finds itself. Belief in the soul and in the devil is still in force, and these are still its main characteristics, which have prevailed up to the present. Each of these characteristics, however, and others, represent attempts by the human capacity for spirituality – the human spirit – to substitute acts, activities, actions, practices, manifestations and functions of being that have diminished over time, or have been disrupted by factors external to it (physical and social environment,) or by repetitive acts of human consciousness itself, which have been suppressed in lifeless forms and which need to be recovered by means of other substitute representations (forms, practices, arts, ceremonies), which are usually not analogous, however, others are imitations that have similarity or equivalence, or are supported by homologous expressive manifestations in parallel.

So, Totemism is that period of transition, where one of its main structural components that make it up, gives an answer to the decline of nomadism in the human being, encouraging it spiritually in its great loss, replacing its pedestrian development, by other spiritual and movement manifestations and actions, which were combined with percussive and rhythmic sounds, structured with music and dance. As a fundamental complement, as we have mentioned, was the imitation of different sacred animals in their ways of walking and in their ritual and action movements, using stems, branches and hollow trunks from trees and bushes selected as sacred to produce music (drums and flutes).

Specifically, it was the imitation of the walking of their sacred animals and the dance that flourished with the spiritual development of the Totem, which could reach that stage of animism.

The walking allows us, in that historical totemist stage, an interpretation of the anthropological behavior of the human being; that function played as a spiritual mechanism in the primitive groups, as a fundamental basis of Totemism.

Of all the paths that we have travelled to analyze, investigate and obtain knowledge of the things that surround us, the one that we have left behind is the human activity of walking. The analysis of its performance – of walking – in Totemism leads us to reveal certain religious behaviors in today’s society. The renunciation of nomadism (or turning away from it) is the germ of the human need to “communicate” -spiritually- with the spirits and later with divinities.

The question must be asked: Did this spiritual need create sedentarism or did the renunciation of nomadism create this spiritual need?

Walking was preserved analogically as a spiritual practice within the Totemist system. This imperative need to walk in a wandering way, which started 2 million years ago, was spiritually satisfied by imitating the animals in their walk and with the dance; a rhythmic and cadenced dance, which communicates with a percussive beat to the body with the external natural environment, in a spiritual and somatic (corporal) way: Spiritual Walking. The more sedentary we become, the greater the need to ask for help from the spirits, from our inner spirituality. The primitive man of those times, is inclined to invoke the spirits – his spirituality – because of his new sedentary state that reduces his capacity to have contact with his unconscious and with other mental functions. How much does it prevent us? We will leave the answer to this question, because of its high complexity in its scientific demonstration, to the researchers of the generations to come.

During nomadism the soul of each individual, man or woman, walked alongside him; in the beginning of sedentarism, and specifically in totemism, the soul flows from the being to identify itself with the totem animals, takes possession of that totem and “learns” to walk like the animal itself; that is, it walks spiritually. The representation of the soul, in those totemic origins, was the soul of the animal selected as the personal totem. That totemic soul was an image – and replacement – unconscious – and also conscious – that flowed from one personification and incarnation, from one body to another, with an absolute and complete mobility, leaving one body and entering the other, and this totemic mobility conferred sustenance to the unconscious of the individual, urgently in need of it, because it had diminished – almost eliminated – its motor function of walking, and therefore its spirituality (Future Post WALKING: AN ANIMIC-SPIRITUAL “MOTOR”    or   WALKING: AN ANIMIC-SPIRITUAL “MECHANISM”). From here is born, but above all flourishes, a new way of invoking human spirituality, and perhaps also, is the genesis of the conscious repression of certain stimuli from the external environment, with which belief in the natural environment – to trust in that objective reality – begins to be replaced by the spirits and very later, by the gods (religion).

A relevant aspect that we observe in Totemism – from our perspective – is that in the performance of some rituals, all the members of the totemic group, of a totem-animal, gather around a ceremonial center where the physical representation of the Totem is located, with the purpose of venerating it and imitating it in its movements (and gestions), fundamentally in their walk – and according to the animal selected – also in other characteristic and outstanding forms of their mobility, walk, circulation and movement (which showed their speed, slowness, dynamism, as well as the different times they use in their different activities of pre-spawning, hunting, feeding, etc. ). Surely this imitation of the Totem-animal was transformed into rhythmic movements that gave rise to the dance (Future Post THE WALKING AND THE DANCE), which was incorporated into the totemic ceremonies as an inherent part of them to the beat and musical rhythm of percussive and wind instruments. Thus, the totemic ceremonies developed into other stages of development, which were accompanied by their initial phase imitating the walking of animals and dance as an extension of that totemic mimicry. In this way, both the man and the woman, of these primitive times, were unconsciously involved in a spiritual process that gave way to the gradual transition from nomadism to sedentarism.

A spiritual need for which they surely identified with those who preserved – in their opinion and through their observations – an innate and natural way of walking, which inclined them to select them because they also maintained some forms of movement [that in the opinion of the primitive man and woman], which resembled their past behavior in various important circumstances (environments, conditions, scenarios): moving from one place to another, hunting prey for food (Future Post WALKING WITH UNCHAINED PROMETHEUS), collecting food, feeding, pre-mating, mating, defending themselves from predatory animals, fleeing from danger, etc.

To the question that has been asked by several thinkers, scholars of Totemism, of: How did it happen that primitive man adopted a Totem-Animal? The answer lies, to a great extent, in this transition from nomadism to sedentarism that I have briefly explained.

Was it a renunciation, an impediment or a natural transit from nomadism to sedentarism?

We leave the answer to part II, TOTEM AND WALKING, PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION.

For the moment, let us prepare ourselves to think about this answer, while we walk.

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