7. Shaman Masks

2007

Dear friends and family -

Like anyone’s life, sometimes the weeks fly by and there’s not much to report. By this time next month I plan to be traveling again and will fill my blog with pictures of exotic places--but for now I’m simply living my life in Chiang Mai, working on my novel. Last week I wrote about my medicine woman/shaman friend Doris Williams. In my search for her I found Gwenievere, another of Doris’s students in the 70‘s and 80‘s, who encouraged me to tell more of the story.

1991 - hand size mask

This is the story of how I became a shaman mask maker. 

I’ll skim over the backstory as quickly as possible. I was a pottery major in college and my style was to embellish my pots with faces--so in actuality I was making masks as early as 1968. By the mid-seventies I had switched to stained glass. In 1976 when Sara was pregnant we met Doris Williams. For the next few years Doris traded all her services for stained glass windows. Sara and I had two sons, Alan and Aaron, owned a restaurant and separated in 1983. I went to California for a couple years and produced an awareness seminar called the Sage Experience. I returned to Anchorage in 1987 and managed a large Mexican restaurant.

Going to seminars and being in the spiritual seminar business opened my awareness in a whole new way. 1987 was the year of the Harmonic Convergence. Mayan and Indian elders were coming forth and my interest in all things shamanic was aroused. I wanted to know more about the inner world--journeying into other dimensions of reality (without drugs)--and fortunately I had a friend who was a brilliant medicine woman and shaman--Doris Williams.

So I went to her with a request. “I want to be a shaman. Teach me to be a shaman.” Her response was unexpected and firm, “You already are one. Go away.” Doris had a way about her of reversing the responsibility. She would always say that all the answers are within you. This is what I write about now--pointing to the divinity within. At that time I was confused with her rejection. Am I not worthy of being a shaman?

1995

By the way, an example of Doris handing over responsibility happened when our son Alan was born. Doris was there for the home birth and when the time arrived she simply crouched in the corner and watched. It was our birthing and who was she to interfere? 

I did go away—dropped the subject--though the part of already being a shaman made absolutely no sense to me. I continued working in the restaurant, caught up in all that drama. A year went by--and I still wanted to be a shaman. Now more than ever.

So, I went back to Doris with a more powerful attitude. “I’m ready, Doris. I want you to teach me to be a shaman and I’m not going to take no for an answer. I’ll do anything. Tell me what to do. I want to be your student. Please!”

She looked at me a long while and finally said, “OK.”

I took that in, pleased, and wondered what it meant. “Where do I go? Where are the shaman meetings?”

“You know.”

“I don’t know. Give me a hint and I’ll be there.”

“You know.”  It went round and round like that until I began to beg.

“Please. I don’t know. Just tell me where the meeting is at and I’ll be there.”

She considered that and finally said, “We meet in the bottom of the ocean.”

1999 - raku

“How do I get there?”

“You know.” We went round and round with that until again I gave up. She wasn’t making it easy for me.

“Just give me a hint. I forgot. Tell how to get down to the bottom of the ocean.” I’m sure she meant the Pacific, one big area to search.

Doris recommended that I get an ocean tape, the sound of waves hitting the shore. Every night before I was to lie down I would sit at the side of my bed and envision myself walking into the ocean. When I would get my head under the water I would lie down and put the covers over my head. I did that every night for four months religiously. It proved to be a great way to fall asleep. Then one night I found myself flying under the ocean and I came upon a lichen encrusted ancient city, on the bottom of the ocean. There were lights on in one of the buildings and I knew that I had finally found where my class was. I got so excited and started racing down to it . . . when I woke up. Shit! Four months to get there and I woke up and couldn’t get back.

Now, during those four months, actually about a month into it, a friend loaned me a small kiln and I began making masks. They were small, less than hand size, but they were shamanic creatures. Some I glazed and others I painted. By the time I woke up from the dream I had quite a collection.

So I went to Doris and told her the story. She smiled and said that I had been going to the classes for six months - two months before I even approached her wanting to be a shaman. (That's why "You know.") She told me that a woman in California in real life described me and wanted to know who the new guy was when I first started coming. Carlos Castaneda wrote about this in one of his shaman books - about remote learning. And that is how I came to be a shaman mask maker.

2009

I am a shaman mask maker.

I mold an image, a still motion being.

A simple face.

I capture life looking back at me

wanting to be set free.

I accept a face, lost in space, 

wanting to Be, through me.

I accept its spirit and gave it form, and together

 we dream it to be alive.

I am a creator god no doubt; a midwife without degree.

My hands mold depth, I breath earth alive

and allow the soul to see.

An ancestor form in clay and paint;

an exhibit of its ethnic race;

a face from galactic history;

a hint of cosmic personality;

a one-of-a-kind undefinable reflection of

an ageless traveler returning,

Reborn.

I mold the love of one in form--

each mask a window of its soul;

a timeless chronicle of eternity expressed.

I think of its immortality.

I capture the beauty;

an inherent divine reflection of ethnicity.

I still the soul, fingers form, direct, arrange--

vibrating molecules into desired perfection.

I am a shaman mask maker! 

I see through the limits of physical reality.

I see beyond the illusion of time and space

into the forever illusive, unchanging presence of a god

still dwelling in a timeless void--

no longer searching for full human form.

I see the face, it speaks to me

and into the soul of the unique, precious

beautiful being I interfere, forming in clay someone

who has simply asked to be.

I am a shaman mask maker!

The masks are alive.They speak to you, or not,

and if they do,

to you, they will be true.

David Dakan Allison

Tengu 2002

For more original masks go to www.dakanarts.com   archives