英文摘要 |
Connections between Surrealism, the esoteric European magical tradition of Hermeticism and tribally-based shamanic praxis are implicit in the written and visual works of Leonora Carrington, the youngest and only British member of the original Surrealist group. Carrington’s painting Burning of Giordano Bruno demonstrates a magico-poetic lineage from Hermes Trismegistus to Bruno, showing a paradoxical, non-mimetic poetics common also to Surrealism, as well as to accounts of the shamanic voyage, often called the Crisis Journey. Bruno’s system of magical linkages, and indeed Western magic, is viewed as a continuation of the shaman’s song, the record of the Crisis Journey. European myth has deep roots in the Eurasian tribal shamanic praxes and ritual, just as European Modernism has a hidden foothold in the New World. Carrington’s mural El Mundo Magico de Los Mayas embraces a magical worldview linking sacred and mundane realms through the medium of the imagination, and this too is an idea shared by Bruno and other Renaissance magi. Travel between worlds is the chief paradigm of the shaman’s song, figured in Carrington’s paintings and fiction through frequent use of the motif of the animal helper spirit, usually a flying horse, or some mutation thereof. I trace Carrington’s adventures with her equine spirit guide in her painting Self Portrait and stories “The House of Fear,” “Uncle Sam Carrington,” “The Seventh Horse” and “The Oval Lady.” The theme of the shamanic descent into the underworld is likewise observed in Carrington’s short story “White Rabbits” and her novel, The Hearing Trumpet. I then argue that Carrington recounts a real life shamanic initiation experience, in her autobiographical Down Below, which posits the shaman as healer of both the individual and the culture. |