Shamans As The First Shapers Of Myth

So who would have been in these early elementary Cultures, as you call them, the equivalent of the poets today? The shamans, The shamans, The shaman is the person who has in his late childhood, early youth, could be male or female, had an overwhelming psychological experience that turns them totally inward. The whole unconscious, The whole unconscious, The whole unconscious has opened up and they’ve fallen into it, they’ve fallen into it And it’s been described many, many times, and it occurs all the way from Siberia right through the Americas down to Tierra del Fuego. It’s a kind of schizophrenic crack-up, the shaman experience.

Audio Clip from Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, Ep. 3: ‘The First Storytellers’