Horns at High Altitudes
He was a scholar and a lecturer and one lecture he
gave once a year always motivated [him] to teach another year. He had traveled extensively and studied
abroad as a young man. He met a
woman when doing so and she had told him a story, among many. She was older but
not too much. They were not
romantically involved if that is what you are thinking, no. The relationship was more of mentor and
student for lack of a better term.
She had seen several studies of the shamanic culture
and in her travels there were many stories that she did not include in her
books or articles. This one was
told to her by a shaman that concerned fire. It went, “A bird shaped gorge found in the human skull has
its entrance in one of the veins leading up to the central nervous system. It was swallowed at birth by the young
woman. Her birth was in a cave so
the shaman believed she had a vision emanating from the ocular nerve. When the young child began having what
looked like something crawling around in her throat the shaman was called. He lit a branch and waved it in front
of the child’s head. He had the
mother open the child’s mouth but he didn’t see anything there. When he waved the limb to the child’s
eyes he saw her eyes bulge then go back to normal.”
He would stop here in his lecture to let this part
sink in. Usually, there would be
many questions. Was this
true? He had spent ten minutes at
the outset explaining what a shaman was but still there were questions. He would continue after a short while.
“The eyes had bulged out then gone back to their
normal setting. Shocked, the
shaman waved the limb again before her eyes and the eyes bulged quicker then
reset again but this time the child’s cheeks began to bulge down to her
mouth. The shaman stepped back and
asked the mother to open her mouth who by this time had begun to cry
uncontrollably and started chanting.
What had been inside the young child was indeed a small bird.”
When the classroom heard this, they began to shift in
their chairs and began to chuckle. He admonished them and informed them of the
many documented instances where shamans have performed rites unproducible by
western medicine. At this time, he
would usually release a small bird into the classroom from a cage he had inside
of his lectern.
Chris Mansel
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