poetry and sought to “Search for the creation of a
role which is closest to the shaman of traditional
societies”. Whitman would be followed by
Kerouac and the rest of the beat generation as
examples of poets who fuse shamanic elements
into their work.
XV
In his essay “Poetry and the primitive” Snyder
speaks of “hunting magic”, “leaving the world”
“communion with nature”. He speaks of Trois
Freres, a shaman dancer poet as representing these
ideals (Jones, 1985). He makes the distinction
between this ancient shamanism and “Californian
shamanism” which sought to “to heal disease and
to resist death with a power acquired from
dreams”. He sees all modes of shamanism modern
and ancient to bear a resemblance and to be
authentic modes of the religion. Synder tells us
that poets the world over are discovering “the
breath, the voice, the trance”, that the universe is
not dead but alive and in a spate of continuous
flow and creation, what he calls "the song of
Sarasvati springing from the trance of Brahma"
(Jones, 1985). This is Snyder’s grand belief in
shamanism. The essence of his belief system is a
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