"GHOUL" - читать интересную книгу автора (McIntyre Vonda N)

r i t e o f t h e g h o u l s - - (c) 1994 Ryan Parker
intended for informational purposes only

HPL wrote of the necrophagic ghoul in Pickman's Model and Dream Quest of
Unknown Kadath. In Lovecraft's mythos the ghoul was a semi-human creature
with a canine or monstrous facial appearance. The ghouls were said to feed
on the human dead or even occasionally live humans. HPL claimed, in his
stories, that it was possible a human to be transformed into a ghoul. The
ghouls of HPL's stories are based on the ghouls or ghuls of Arab myth and
magick. In Arab myth ghuls are again semi-human creatures with monstrous
or animalistic faces. Like HPL's ghouls the Arab ghul lived in lonely and
deserted places feeding on the dead. In Arab myth it is said the powerful
magicians can transform into ghuls. The ghuls are associated with a
homophagic diet (eating humans), necrophilia, and magickal transformation.

The ghuls of Arab magick are reminiscent of many aspects of shamanism. In
many cultures it is common for the shaman to transform into an animalistic
or semihuman form. Ritual cannibalism was found in almost every culture at
one time or another. Even today in cultures where ritual cannibalism is no
longer physically enacted there still remains traces of symbolic
cannibalism. Tibetan and Hindu sadhus often undergo rites involving a
corpse, sometimes even with necrophilic elements. In HPL, Arab magick, and
shamanism there are undercurrents of devouring, being devoured, and
transformation into animalistic forms.

The so called "grotesqueness and monstrosity of the liminal sacra
(shamanic knowledge)" in shamanism are not darkness for its own sake. The
"monstrous" elements in shamanism are intended to force the practitioner
to face and integrate primal, animalistic aspects of her or his psychic
make up. Such drives have been termed the "Shadow" by Jung Although our
culture has labeled the these drives "evil" they are within us all.
Shamanic practices help us to accept and integrate the Shadow.

According to many researchers the dark and bizarre rituals in shamanism
are designed to force the practitioner to confront cultural "taboos" and
ego limits in order to free the shaman from these artificial confines.
Thus the "monstrosities" of magick and shamanism are psychodynamic
techniques aiming at liberation. They help us to confront and transcend
our taboos and to integrate the Shadow or the "evil" and animalistic
drives in our psychic make up. Sometimes, in shamanic initiation, the
"monstrous" elements are combined with other tactics to eliminate false
ego structures such as taunting or mockery.

It should be noted that symbolic cannibalism, when it involves
symbolically "eating" the shaman, is closely related to experiences that
often occur spontaneously in an initiatory ordeal or crisis. Very often a
shaman will undergo a prolonged psychophysical illness that ends in an
initiatory experience. The initiatory experience often involves being torn
to pieces or being devoured by demonic forms. This same archetypal process