Icaros

Sound magic.

Icaro: a sonic transmission with several intents:  to heal, shift awareness, and encode.  

Icaros can be representational:  songs that aim to elicit imagery and emotion through their content for the participants.

Icaros can be non-representational:  sounds emitted vocally or through a variety of instruments aimed to shift the

body/consciousness of the participants to another state during a journey.  

Views among curanderos regarding icaros vary.  Some will say that icaros are medicinal and curative on their own and that

icaros for specific maladies are a con.  Others will insist that icaros can be tailored to an ailment.

Icaros can be gained through a journey,  learned from a curandero,  picked up from the web, or  through meditation.  

Keep in mind that the effect of the icaro is the criteria.  Is one moved, altered, shifted in anyway that is of value?  The impact of an icaro on individuals  or group will vary according to set and setting. 

One can be a passive recipient of an icaro or actively work with the melody, instruments,  to realize intent.

I would add one more consideration.  Icaros are a form of communion between Self to Divinities, Self to Self and Self to Habitat.  Sound magic is universal and are practiced in multiple traditions.

"We still do not know what the body can do".  The philosopher Spinoza still speaks to us across centuries.

What we can do, I offer, is to recover phenomena that philosophers relinquished along the way in pursuit of certain kinds of truths.

Often enough,  I am musician for shamanic ceremonies who then becomes a shamanic musician.  Over the years, before and after ceremonies I have engaged folks from all walks of life on the meaning and value of this kind of work.

My take on it at this time is that the term Shamanic has overtaken what used to circumscribe the Imaginal realm that Henri Corbin so aptly articulated in his studies on Sufism.

The Shamanic now locates the mystical and sets up the horizon of meaning for a broad set of practices, beliefs, and conversations.  There are many reasons why I participate in Ceremonies.  Among them is how extremely fecund the Shamanic planes can be.

One feature is that Shamanism dislodges faith from the theologians.  When the philosophers went to pursue the marvels of certain forms of reason particularly those that favored scientific thinking faith was left to the theologians who appropriated it and designed assorted architectures of belief and dogma around faith.

Much of what transpires in Shamanic work is faith based but not faith like we tend to connote in the West.  Shamanism labors this "power", this ability, faculty or self generating quality without the metaphysical and religious trappings that we associate the word with.

Both the power bestowed upon the shaman and the power the shaman bestows upon the various technologies used for transformation and their meaning be it icaros, songs, drums, dances, poetry, all the different kinds of reciprocal transmissions shared, are based upon the deployment of this very peculiar and vital force we dwell with called faith.

Faith, by the way, is involved in the truth procedures of other disciplines and scientific enterprises are no different in  this regard: Will this work? How does this work? It will succeed, and so on, all  presuppose a certain kind of attunement in the world which resonate with the properties of faith.

So one form of questioning that we must advance anew is a study of  the phenomenology of "faith" and do so in a manner that avoids theological posturing and scientific skepticism.

What can the body do?  We are still learning this.