Respecto al objetivo específicos 3:

The shaman-sickness forces the nominee to detach him-herself from the world of humanity and material existence and to enter the closed realm of primordial energy, powers and spirits.

Through a near-death experience induced by spirit-sickness, shamans become:

A master of death, a messenger from the Beyond…as one of the most capable explorers of an inner world which, in turn, is but the outer appearance of another realm…the transpersonal psychology of the shaman arrives at diagnosis and form of healing that overcome the shortsightedness inherent in forms of analysis confined to the human

106 environment. The new psychology will show the conflicts in our lives to be related both to the here and now and to the Beyond. Based on this super insight it will strive for therapeutic solutions that might be somewhat unusual and incomprehensible in the eyes of ordinary people.¹²⁵

In Korean shamanism, only the god-appointed type undergoes the shamanic-illness, the experience grants the nominee a supernatural power to heal, to diagnose, and to communicate with the spirits. The shamanic-illness serves two purposes: first, it is a means of awakening the nominee to the divine selection and isolating the person from his or her previous life through various physical and mental afflictions; second, it is a way of training the nominee to become fit for the mission, as the shamanic-sickness prefigures the hazardous journey that the

novice has to undertake for the future ministry. Through alienation and a spiritual rebirth, the nominee’s physical and psychological capacities are challenged and replaced by gifts of the

spirits.

After Ezekiel’s visions of the celestial court, the hand of God falls upon Ezekiel for the second time and commands, ‘Arise, go forth into the plain, and there I will speak with you’ (3.22). There is a formula in Ezekiel (1.28-2:2; 3.22-24) which implies the transitional

state of mind of the nominee under the influence of the spirit: a spiritual calling, the divine vision in the wilderness, the spirit entering into Ezekiel and making him stand, and the

125 Kalweit, Dreamtime, 14-15.

107 communication with the divine.¹²⁶ The ground he is standing on is transformed from ordinary to supernatural (cf. Exod 3.5), and Ezekiel sees and hears the deity itself, a sight and sound that is usually hidden from the naked human eye.¹²⁷ The divine instruction to Ezekiel is of total seclusion from the mundane world: once Ezekiel shuts himself within his house, cords bind him so that he cannot go out among the people, and his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth so that he is dumb and unable to reprove people (3.25-26). Ezekiel’s imprisonment and dumbness are similar to the process where Korean novice shamans detach themselves from the mundane life and its defilements, a process which consequently alters the inner structure of the nominee so that he or she can reach a higher level of the senses, tuned into the

spiritual realm. What is interesting is that the shamanic-sickness is an ‘illness’ or ‘madness’

from an outsider’s point of view, but, fundamentally, it is a spiritual way of reconstructing

and revitalising the physical and mental fitness of the nominee, where the emphasis is always

on cure and recovery rather than the infliction itself. The spirit claims all the rights and senses of Ezekiel’s body and mind, and the nominee will regain his ability to speak and

126 The phenomenon of the prophet empowered by the spirit to stand and assume the position of a servant standing in front of the divine master can be also found in 1 Kgs 17.1; 18.15; 2 Kgs 3.14; 5.16;

Jer 15.1.

127 The concept of the sacred site or holy ground is still widely observed in shamanistic and other pagan religious cultures. As opposed to the archaeological understanding of the sacred site as a time window to the past, shamans and neo-shamans believe that such places are still ‘alive’ today, infused with spiritual energy so that practitioners can feel, engage with, or contact ancestors, gods, and nature spirits. For further discussion of the sacred site in contemporary spiritualism, see R. Wallis, Shamans/Neo-Shamans: Ecstasy, Alternative Archaeologies and Contemporary Pagan (London:

Routledge, 2003), 142-167.

108 communicate with other people when the spirit channels through him again: ‘But when I speak with you, I will open your mouth, and you shall say to them, “Thus says the Lord God”’ (3.27).

The difference between Ezekiel’s calling and that of other prophets (Moses and Jeremiah) is that there is no strong resistance on the part of the nominee to the divine will, but instead Ezekiel immediately faces an extreme alteration of his former self. Moreover, unlike Moses and Jeremiah who received the call of the spirit due to the uniqueness of their particular personal being (as in their being predestined to be chosen by the spirit), and unlike other prophets who are addressed by the divine by their proper names (Samuel in 1 Sam 3.4;

Amos in Amos 7.8; Moses in Exod 3.4 and Jeremiah in Jer 1.11; 24.3), Ezekiel is repeatedly addressed through stereotyped formulae - ‘son of man’ or ‘mortal’ - although there is something almost inhuman and stark about his response (or lack of it) toward his calling.

Ezekiel is to exercise strict restraint in his human habits, both sleeping (4.4-7) and dietary (4.9-12). Ezekiel is ordered to lie on each side for a number of days respectively (three hundred and ninety days, equal to the number of years of the punishment of the people of Israel, and forty days for the punishment of Judah, a day for each year) as a sign of bearing the punishment of the people. The cords will be upon Ezekiel so that he cannot turn from one side to the other until he completes the term of his ordeal (v.8). The cords appear here for a

109 second time, meaning a total submission to the divine instruction, yet the implication is changed. If the first usage of cords (3.25) is to prevent the prophet’s interaction with the

people, the second usage (4.8) is to ensure that the prophet fulfils his responsibility as a bearer of the guilt-punishment of the people. The symbolic bondage of the guilt and punishment represents the prophetic act of public identification, as he bears it as a burden in his own life (Ezek 3.26; 24.7; 33.22; cf. Isa 53.7). However, this bearing is not substitutionary, as if the prophet were atoning for their guilt, but representative (cf. Exod 28.38), more likely a sign-action (or theatrical teaching).¹²⁸

An analogous example of a sign-act can be found in the Korean shaman’s ritual for the dead. The shaman begins the ceremony by dressing in rough hemp cloth with coarse rope, which signifies the appearance of the death messenger, and she (since the majority of Korean shamans, especially the god-appointed type, are women) hisses at people, snatches the food from the table and gulps it down with her hands in a fidgety fashion, indicating the rough

condition of the netherworld where the newly dead is now placed. The long journey of the

128 For the rhetorical aspect of Ezekiel’s sign-acts as nonverbal communication, see, K. G. Friebel, Jeremiah’s and Ezekiel’s Sign-Acts (JSOTSup 283; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 192-213. Another study is that of Lang, who argues that these symbolic acts function as ‘street theater’, dramatically visualising the oral messages of the prophet. B. Lang, ‘Street Theater, Raising the Dead, and the Zoroastrian Connection in Ezekiel’s Prophecy’, in J. Lust, Ezekiel and His Book (BETL 74;

Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1986), 302-305. Other examples of symbolic actions of prophets in relation to the future of the community are: Isaiah, who walks barefoot and scantily clad for three years as a sign against Egypt (Isa 20.3-4); Jeremiah, who carries a wooden yoke around Jerusalem, as a gesture that the residents should surrender to Nebuchadnezzar (Jer 27.2, 12; 28.10); and Elisha, who determines the outcome of the war against Syria by using a bow and arrows (2 Kgs 3.14-19).

110 soul from the netherworld to paradise is symbolised in long strips of white cloth woven with different materials, with which the shaman makes a pavement by tearing it in two. She thrusts her body, writhing in pain and grief until she reaches the end of the strip, which is now made of silk: the heavenly paradise. Although Korean shamans do not bear either the guilt or the punishment of the people, because today the Korean shamanic service operates at a personal

level, a shaman/clientele basis rather than a communal one, the Korean shamanic ceremony has a similar mechanism to ‘street theatre’, where the sign acts of the prophets (shamans)

provide excellent educational material for the audience.

In the case of Ezekiel, during the ordeal, the prophet is to live on a minimal amount of food (the historical realities of the burden are illustrated in Jer 37.21; 38.6) prepared in such an unbearable manner that for the first time the prophet raises his voice to defend his priestly purity (4.14). Ezekiel’s objection to the way his food is prepared (baked on human

dung) is the only expression of his personal opinion about his commission in the entire book.

Ezekiel’s protest contains a confession about his previous manner of life, led by a very

definite ideal of purity. However, the rationed portions of food and drink and the manner of preparing food indicate the inevitable suffering of the people during the siege, which the prophet has already demonstrated in his symbolic action of bearing the guilt and punishment

111 of the community. Ezekiel’s desire to maintain his own purity has lost its ideological ground because he is now a priest without a temple. As Allen observes:

The tone of the composition changes from the transcendent to the immanent, from the universal to the particular. The change is necessitated by the increased involvement of Ezekiel, the Judean exile, as he ceases to be an external observer and becomes a participant in the divine purpose.¹²⁹

There is no more sacrificial system, purification offerings or priestly purity to be gained by keeping himself alienated from impure objects or people. If the purity that separates the priest from the people was a way of serving the community (in a paradoxical sense),¹³⁰ now Ezekiel finds himself among the exiles in an unclean land, the experience of which ‘would

harness his purity to the greater good of the community [as] Ezekiel has become a vestigial member of the body politic’.¹³¹ God issues another instruction, for Ezekiel to shave his head

and beard (5.1) as if to nullify further any previous traces of his human life. According to Num 6.5, those who had taken a vow to separate themselves to God were forbidden to cut their hair during the period of the vow (the vow of a Nazirite, Judg 13.15; 16.17; 1 Sam 1.11), and it would be shameful for Ezekiel the priest (1.3) to be stripped off a symbol of his identity. The divine orders appear to serve two purposes: for the prophet himself it is to

129 Allen, Ezekiel 1-19, 38.

130 According to Milgrom, in the sacrificial system of the Temple, priestly purity serves to absolve corporate guilt, where the action is only accomplished through the priests’ eating the purification offerings, for ‘when the priest consumes תאטח, he is making a profound theological statement:

holiness has swallowed impurity; life can defeat death’. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16 (AB; New York:

Doubleday, 1991), 637.

131 M.S. Odell, ‘You Are What You Eat: Ezekiel and the Scroll’, JBL 117 (1998), 240.

112 detach himself from his previous way of life, and for the community it is a sign-act that demonstrates their future.

There is no figure like Moses, Jeremiah or Ezekiel in Korean shamanism, no one who is given great authority as a political and religious leader besides the traditional divinatory role. Nonetheless, the altruistic ethics of Korean shamans, who identify themselves with the oppressed and marginalised, are basically what these prophets learn to embrace from their long process of trial and conflicts, so that they can recognise the bond between the sacred and the secular, between themselves and the people of God. The deity orders Ezekiel not just to cut his body hair but to burn it, to strike it with a sword, to scatter it to the wind,

and to cast it into the fire (5.2-5), where such actions symbolise destruction and the grim reality of the future of the people, whose fate is now tied with the prophet himself (‘and you

shall take from these a small number, and bind them in the skirts of your robe’, v.3). In Korean shamanism, the intrusion of the spirits, illnesses, death, isolation and social stigma all prepare the novice shaman for the future ministry, because such experiences make the practitioner aware of the suffering of other people, and enables them to sympathise with them, and to seek to secure the means of alleviating their pain. Now Ezekiel has to leave all previous ritual confinements behind and face a community that has lost its connection to God.

113 He cannot atone for the guilt of the people as he did when he was a priest, but must simply live through the exile, siege, famine and destruction that are in store for them.