Shaman Staff Walking Stick-Part 3- Wood Burning Begins

I've begun the process of wood burning the  story onto the stick.  At this point, I have the whole first sentence burned onto the stick.  Before I get into the story itself, I wanted to blog about the imaginative process for developing the idea for the story.  The pictures are of the first sentence.

This is an art stick.  Its title is Shaman Staff.  I tried to envision what a shaman's staff might look like and how it came to take that form.  The staff is not meant to represent any particular culture.  However, my ideas for the design of the stick are based on research on traditional designs from a number of cultures. I wanted to understand what was important enough to a culture to preserve through its art.

In my research on tribal designs, I found that there was a lot of overlap between cultures in designs and themes.  Carvings on traditional Maori buildings closely resembled totem poles from the Pacific Northwest.  Some Polynesian designs resembled traditional Native American designs.  Some traditional South Pacific animal figures closely resembled Celtic Zoomorphic  figures.  I tried to focus my research on documented traditional designs rather than later material, but in some cases it was hard to say when the cultures overlapped and what was modern day interpretation.  Part of the design overlap can be attributed to the use of basic geometric shapes and shapes visible to all of us such as the sun and moon or animals.  However, humans have been crossing the globe for centuries, and their ideas and art traveled with them.  It is hard to say which culture came up with a design first.

With a lot of ideas in mind I started to design the walking stick for my imaginary culture.  I had to consider what information could be extrapolated from what is known of early tribal culture and the function of a shaman.  (I hesitate to use the word primitive when describing a culture because every culture works with the best of its technology.)  So I started to imagine a prehistorical time period with a small group of people banding together against all the world.  They had to deal with trying to find food, fending off predatory animals and people, and dealing with illness with what medicines that they could find on the land.  The shaman was an important member of the group.  He healed the sick and advised the leaders.  And as in many cultures and folk tales, he carried a staff covered with symbols.  So my questions were: What symbols would be on the staff and why were they important?  The answers were enlightening.  The following exercise will help you to understand.  I hope you will take the time to consider some answers before reading beyond the next paragraph.


Consider our small band of people.  In such a small group illness, injury, and attack could devastate a society.  How much knowledge is lost if members of the tribe that hold that knowledge are lost?  Without a written language, how do you save the knowledge to pass on to others?  Even if there is a written language, how useful is it if no one is left who can
read it?  (Would we have translated hieroglyphics if the Rosetta Stone had not been found?)  If you your ability to preserve knowledge (other than through oral history) is limited to only what you can carry, which knowledge is important enough to save?  If you are using oral history, how do you remember it all?

Maybe you came up with different answers than I did, but these are the answers I came up with.  Some of the symbols on the staff are mnemonic devices that help retain the oral history.  Some These symbols have a story attached to them.  They function rather like bytes of information on a computer.  This helps to keep information in order.   From my research into traditional designs, I think that some of the designs are showing which foods to eat. Another traditional design is based on a weaving pattern.  It could show both how to weave cloth and how to make a shelter.  This would be important information to pass on in the event that knowledgeable members of the tribe were lost.  A genealogical history might also be useful in keeping order or establishing leadership.  And it may also contain a creation story, that bonds the group together and helps define the culture. If the tribe had a written language, I expect that the creation story would be written on the staff also. Just about every culture has a story about where they came from.  Many early cultures have stories that trace their ancestry back to the sun and the beginning of the earth.

Anyway, I started burning the creation story on to the stick.  Once that is complete I will start adding symbols.  As I blogged last time, I had to narrow the story down considerably in order for it to be legible and fit on the stick.  If you feel like doing another thought exercise, try this:  If you had to tell a story from the big bang to the current day, transmit the hopes and dreams of the society, and tell the person that currently holds the stick the importance of his or her existence, and do it in only six sentences (the amount of line that would fit on the stick in this format) (and try to do it somewhat poetically) (and do it in a decorative matter) what would you write?

The first line wood burned onto the stick:  We began as the dust of ancient stars.

Next blog: How to transfer the words and symbols onto a stick.