B. Yeats, ‘The Song of the Wandering Aengus’ Yeats’s Aengus…had the fire in his head that shamans everywhere believe is their source of enlightenment, illuminating visions of other realities. The shamanic journey begins and ends in the mind… – Tom Cowan, Fire in the Head Koryakskoe Rayirin Yayai (House of the Drum, Land of the Koryak) Within the yurt, the shaman was drumming softly as the others sat in a circle around the fire and chanted in the beautiful rhythms that Aleksandr had come to love. He sat outside the tent flap and listened. He loved the sounds of the shamans for they tranquilized his thoughts, creating a kind of harmonic that seemed to flow through his body and helped to heal his frayed and damaged nerves. But often, when these rhythms stopped, the fire would return: the fire that filled his head with that burning light, that searing pain – not physical, more like something that emanated from within his psyche. He had no real sense of time yet, either.
