The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves

Engraving in Skabberged, Norway

We argue that he tradition [shamanism] goes still further back, even to the first emergence of fully modern human beings. At all times and in all places people have entered ecstatic or frenzied altered states of consciousness and experienced hallucinations. Indeed, the potential to shift, voluntarily or involuntarily, between different states of consciousness is a function of the universal human nervous system. All people have to cope with different states of consciousness in one way or another. Some people – by no means all – became shamans.

Upper Palaeolithic, for they too were Homo sapiens sapiens and, we may confidently assume, had the same nervous system as all people today.

Altered states of consciousness shade one into another and are notoriously hard to define. They may, however, be thought of as ranging along a continuum. At one end of the continuum we have what we may loosely call “alert consciousness”; at the other end is deep trance.

Alert consciousness is the condition in which people are fully aware of their surroundings and are able to react rationally to those surroundings. Alert consciousness is, however, not an easily definable and discrete state, for even in daily life people shift from inward-looking states and more outward-looking states. The inward, or reflective, states move them a little further along the continuum. When, for example, people are in the “light” altered state of consciousness that we call daydreaming, they are much less alert; sometimes they are almost oblivious of their surroundings. Dreaming is another altered state of consciousness, one that is still further along the continuum. In some cultures the dreams of ordinary people are taken to be glimpses of a world that is more fully visited by religious specialists in deep trance. When dreaming, people have far less control over their mental experiences than they do while they are daydreaming, although in the condition known as ‘lucid dreaming’, a state between waking and sleeping, people can control (or, rather, they can learn to control) their imagery. This skill is in fact part of some shamans’ spiritual techniques.

At the far end of the continuum are the deep states that are an essential part of shamanism. In these states people believe that they are perceiving things that are, in fact, not really there; in other words, they hallucinate. Hallucinations may be blissful, ecstatic, or terrifying. In deep states, all the senses hallucinate: People not only see visions; they also hear, smell, and taste non-real things and experience strange sensations in their bodies. These deep states include the condition generally known as trance (another word that is hard to define), the state that shamans enter and value so much.

Geometric shapes in stage one of the trance (Painted Cave, Santa Barbara, California).

Stages of Trance

In the first, or lightest, stage of trance people ‘see’ geometric forms, such as dots, zigzags, grids, sets of parallel lines, nested curves, and meandering lines. The forms are brightly coloured and flicker, pulsate, enlarge, contract, and blend one with another. With the eyes open, they are projected luminously onto surfaces such as walls and ceilings. In some shamanic societies, certain of these forms are given meaning; others are ignored. Among the South American Tukano, for instance, sets of brilliant dots represent the Milky Way, the goal of shamanic flight. Many meanings are possible.

In the second stage, subjects try to make better sense of the geometric shapes by illusioning them into objects of religious or emotional significance. The objects may also depend on the emotional states of the subject. Shimmering zigzags may be construed as a writhing snake. 



BugleBoy by Davin Fitsjohn

 The third stage is reached via a vortex, or tunnel. Subjects feel themselves drawn into the vortex, at the end of which is a bright light. On the sides of the vortex is a lattice derived from the geometric imagery of stage one. In the compartments of this lattice are the first hallucinations of people, animals and so forth.

Chris Ofili

When subjects emerge from the far end of the tunnel, they find themselves in the bizarre world of trance: Monsters, people, and settings are intensely real. The geometric percepts are still present, but chiefly peripherally. With ones’ eyes open, Stage Three hallucinations are, like the geometrics of Stage One, projected onto surrounding surfaces. They seem to float across walls and ceilings. At the same time, the surfaces themselves become animated. A picture hanging on a wall, for instance, will be seen in three dimensions and with heightened colours, and it may start to move, to come alive. In Stage Three people feel that they can fly and change into birds or animals.

One of the most frequently reported experiences of Stage Three altered consciousness is transformation not into a geometric form but into an animal.

The Shamans of Prehistory, Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams 1996 P 16-17

Having achieved trance, by whatever means, shamans in many parts of the world acquire an association with a particular spirit-animal (or, sometimes, a plant) and the supernatural potency that bestows. Some writers have likened shamanic potency to electricity; it can be in things yet be invisible. Some writers call shamanic potency “life force”, but whatever we call it, it is fundamental to shamanic activity and is represented in shamanic art by means of various conventions.

The Shamans of Prehistory, Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams 1996 P 23

Deep altered states of consciousness are, by and large, interpreted in one of two ways: spirit possession or soul-loss. Complex agricultural societies tend to believe that ecstasies of trance are caused by an outside spirit, good or evil, which enters into and takes possession of a person. On the other hand, hunting-and-gathering societies usually interpret the effects and hallucinations of Stage Three trance as soul-loss, that is, they believe that a shamans’ spirit leaves his or her body. Soul-loss is frequently experienced as flight or travelling or travelling underground.

The Shamans of Prehistory, Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams 1996 P 26

The eland was, for the San, a symbol with multiple associations. But its pricipal significance seems to have been shamanic supernatural potency. In San thought, this potency permeates creation, but it is particularly present in the large antelope, especially the eland. This potency was channelled into some paintings by mixing the antelopes blood into the paint. These paintings became reservoirs of potency. As shamans danced in the rock shelters, they turned to face the paintings when they felt the need to increase their potency. Then, like electricity, the potency flowed from the paintings into them, and they were catapulted into the spirit realm.

As in other shamanic societies, this realm was, at least partially, underground. There are no deep caves in the most densely painted areas of Southern Africa, but shallow rock shelters seem to have been seen, at least under certain circumstances, as entries into the spirit world. The shaman-artists were able to coax the creatures and spirits of the underworld through the rock. In doing so, they were recreating and reworking their visions, making palpable what they experienced and saw on their subterranean out-of-body journeys. The underground origin of some of these images is suggested by the way in which they enter and leave cracks and other inequalities in the rock surface. Sometimes, only half a spirit-animal can be seen; the rest of it seems to be behind the rock face. The rock was like a veil suspended between this world and the spirit world.


Some paintings of animals and people were touched until their outlines became smeared....hand prints were made by placing paint on the fingers and then pressing the hand against the rock. It seems that this was not done to 'make' pictures of hands. rather, the potency-filled paint created some sort of bond between the person, the rock veil, and the spirit world that seethed behind it.

  The Shamans of Prehistory, Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams 1996 P 33


Vivid though they are, these panels were not mere pictures. More than simple pictures, the panels were gateways to the spirit world, panoramas which, in their trance experience, shamans could enter and with which their own projected mental imagery could mingle in three animated dimensions. 


The Shamans of Prehistory, Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams 1996 P 35

The Paleolithics’ keen perception of the subterranean milieu and their way of imagining it revealed the way in which the way they used the natural contours and relief’s. …the cave itself imposes the representation of a particular animal, such as a bird at Altxerri. When one uses a candle , the walls seem to come alive with the moving shadows cast by the pulsing flame. Then it becomes easy to see animals in the rock shapes.

The Shamans of Prehistory, Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams 1996 P 56

 Sympathetic Magic

The theory of sympathetic magic is based on a relationship or identity postulated between an image and its subject. In acting upon the image, one acts upon the person or animal represented. It was well defined by Count Begouen: “An idea generally widespread among all primitive peoples is that the representation of a living being is, to some extent, an emanation of this same being, and that the possession of the image of the being grants the bearer a certain power over him. We can therefore imagine that primitive humans also believed that the fact of representing an animal placed it, to some extent, under their domination, and that, as masters of its form, or double, they could easily make themselves masters of the animal itself.

The magic arts were subsequently seen as having a practical objective, that of aiding survival. According to Begouen, “The art of this era was utilitarian”.

If prehistoric people went so far underground to draw in secluded places, it was argued, this could only have been for reasons relating to magic, since these drawings were not intended to be seen. “Only the execution of the drawing or sculpture was important. The representation of an animal was an act that had value in and of itself. Once this act was completed, the immediate and material result of this act, the drawing, had no importance.

Magical practices allegedly had three main goals: the hunt, and destruction. …From this vantage point, animals were “image-realities”, signs referred to the hunt (weapons, wounds, traps), and the humans were sorcerers dressed in animal skins or endowed with animal attributes to better capture their qualities and power, to reign over the beasts.

The Shamans of Prehistory, Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams 1996 P 68-69

In short, the theories of Reinach, Breuil, and Begouen are based on the basic idea that humans attempted, through certain practices, to influence the course of events in order to facilitate their daily life. Modern ethnological studies have demonstrated that most traditional cultures share this attitude, whether it is a matter of avoiding catastrophes, re-establishing a certain equilibrium with nature, contributing to a change in the seasons, enhancing the spread of game, healing the sick, or punishing enemies. This calling upon the forces other than those used in daily life is one of the universals of human thought.

The Shamans of Prehistory, Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams 1996 P 72

If the walls were a highly significant membrane between people and spirits, what did that concept mean for making of images on those surfaces? In other words, did what people believe about the walls influence those who made the images?

The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves P 86

An important reciprocality is implied by these images born of shifting chiaroscuro. On the one hand, the creator of the image holds it in his or her power: a movement of the light source can cause the image to appear out of the murk; another movement causes it to disappear. The creator is master of the image. On the other hand, the image holds its creator in its thrall: if the creator (or subsequent viewer) wishes the image to remain visible, he or she is obliged to maintain a posture that keeps the light source in a specific position. Relax, and the image retreats into the Stygian realm from which it was coaxed. Perhaps more than any other Upper Paleolithic images, these “creatures” (creations) of light and darkness point to a complex interaction between person and spirit, artist and image, rock and spirit-animal.

 The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves P 91

The important point here is that the paintings and engravings do not depict real animals that were hunted for food in a real landscape, no matter how exact their anatomical details and postures might be. They are more like visions that were sought in a subterranean spirit realm for their supernatural potency and the help that they could give to shamans.

An important implication flows from the visionary characteristics of the images. It is unlikely that the paintings and engravings depicted in the same ways that, say, Western portraits depict people. The ways in which many of the images were made and conjured out of the rock face suggest that the “artists” were re-creating – in some sense re-dreaming – their visions and fixing them on the membrane through which they had materialised. A richly painted cave therefore did not simply contain a number of pictures of animals: it contained many visions made manifest and fixed by painted and engraved lines.

Sometimes this fixing may have been done during an altered state of consciousness as vision questers reached out to touch the images floating on the walls before them. At other times, the fixing may have been done after the altered state had passed; the questers then used paint and engraved lines to bring back and to re-create their visions.

 The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves P 92

It was the act of covering the hand and the immediately adjacent surfaces with paint that was important. People were sealing their own or others’ hands into the walls, causing them to disappear what was probably a spiritually powerful and ritually prepared substance, rather than a “paint” in out sense of the word. The moments when the hands were “invisible”, rather than the paints that were left behind, were what mattered most. They established an intimate relationship between the participants and the hidden world of the spirits.

 The Shamans of Prehistory, Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams 1996 P 95

This new understanding of Upper Paleolithic handprints helps us to see why people sometimes made only small marks or smudges of red paint on the underground surfaces, they were not “painting” those marks. Rather, they were placing a spiritually powerful substance – ritually prepared “paint” – on surfaces deep in the underworld. What are for twentieth-century people easily missed, inconspicuous marks probably had an enormous emotional impact for those of the Upper Paleolithic who made ans saw them.

 The Shamans of Prehistory, Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams 1996 P 96

The physical shape of the cave was a framework that offered certain possibilities and precluded others. Some caves encouraged particular kinds of beliefs and associated rituals; others may have constrained the development of some aspects of shamanism.

The Shamans of Prehistory, Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams 1996 P 101

In the vestibules, people constructed a rich underworld: the images they made probably told of what lay behind the rock and, importantly, what lurked farther down the dark passageways that led off the chambers. The dancing, chanting, and other activities that probably took place in the presence of these images prepared peoples minds in a number of ways.

First, people were presented with a powerful impression of what the underworld was like, an impression with which it was difficult – but not impossible – to argue: they were, after all, already in the entrails of the dark underworld. The people who directed the proceedings and those who actually made the images were probably an elite who, by the presentation of their particular version of the underworld in such highly charged emotional circumstances, tried to enhance and reinforce their own social positions.

The most highly decorated caves proclaimed the owning groups privileged access to and knowledge of the underworld.

….that access was used differentially within the community that owned the cave. It seems likely that embellished chambers that prepared the minds of vision-questers for what they would experience in the solitude of the smaller, deeper areas. As we pointed out, in Stage Three trance people tend to hallucinate what they expect to hallucinate: the embellished vestibules stocked their minds. But the negotiation of power relations was not absent; these vestibules were a way of channelling the questers’ visions, of cutting down the element of idiosyncrasy, or novelty, that is present in all hallucinatory experiences. The embellished vestibules tried (but did not always succeed) to discredit any originality and individuality that may have challenged the religious and political status quo. In short, the embellished vestibules worked toward conformity of visions and so the consolidation of power.

  The Shamans of Prehistory, Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams 1996 P 103 – 106

In the Diverticule of Felines, some of these lines may represent spears; eight are drawn on the back of a feline. But many others seem to be random cut marks. Perhaps that is exactly what they are: cuts (though not random) made into the rocky membrane to allow the escape of supernatural power and animals or to achieve some sort of relationship between the maker and the underworld that was believed to exist behind the surface, a relationship that we do not now understand.

The Shamans of Prehistory, Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams 1996 P 108

…the chances that people hallucinated in these spaces is high indeed; given the prolonged isolation, hallucinations would certainly have been experienced. Searching with the mind and also with hands and light, questers sought and found what they were looking for. The desired animal-spirit appeared to them out of the rock. Then, as some altered states of consciousness permit, the questers may have sketched their projected visions in an attempt to fix them, to gain control over them.  Sometimes only a few strokes were required, together with the interplay of light and shadow, to bring back a vision. Then, transformed by their visions, filled with new power and insight, the questers returned through the entrails of the underworld, past the communally produced images that had prepared their minds, and out of the cave to rejoin their society in a new role, the role of shaman, seer, and intrepid penetrator of the underworld.

The Shamans of Prehistory, Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams 1996 P 110