Chapter 2, Visual Arts & Healing - Masks and Healing

Mask making has been a human activity almost as long as humans have existed. Cave paintings in France and Spain seem to show “shamans” wearing various masks, like that of a deer, and experiencing an ecstatic trance. Tribal cultures all over the world, in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia exhibit an astonishing array and variety of masks, some crude, some highly ornate and polished. Most peoples who incorporate shamanism into their culture are very familiar with masks and how they are employed for different reasons in the tribal politic (such as healing, possession of spirits, illustrating stories or myths, etc.).
Masks have been made of many materials, such as wood, paper, papier mache, metal, carved bone or ivory, fabrics, fibers, shells, feathers, plastic, etc. There is a vast array of masks made in the USA every year for Halloween, Mardi gras, costume balls, etc., but these commercially made masks for amusement purposes are beyond the scope of this paper. Here we examine the more ritualistic, magical
properties of masks, as understood in different ways by people throughout the world, sometimes for healing purposes.

Fig. 30 Bearded ebony African Mask. Ibid. Fig. 29 Bearded African Mask.

Some writers have claimed that the origin of masks arose congruent with wild, unconscious, id-like desires, and are an expression of them. Art audiences in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries became aware of the masks of Africa and Oceania, which thus influenced the work of Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso (Les Demoiselles de Avignon), Max Ernst, and others. The paintings utilizing these mask forms seemed anarchic, wild, crude and threatening. On the contrary, anthropology has shown that “mask wearers often take a great deal of trouble to learn and rehearse…steps, synchronized combined movements, or learning texts, in order to perform, often in perfect synchrony” (Pernet 106).

Masks conceal, but they can also reveal. In ancient Greek theatre, masks revealed the archetypal character that an actor played.

Masks can offer the illusion of a reality, much like the Maya of Buddhism offers an illusory version of reality, or the Matrix, in the movie of the same name. Masks protect – the identity of a person, the emotions, or they can conceal any human sensibilities, allowing for robotic, inhumane behavior, such as presented by the Storm Troopers in Star Wars. The marble sculptures of gods and heroes in ancient Greece presented these figures with idealized features, which in itself constitutes a kind of mask, denying any puny human frailties or imperfections to motives commonly read in a human face; they can conceal deformities, a la Phantom of the Opera.

Buddhists have a conception of the self which posits that the self is in fact a mask we show to the world, a number of masks, actually. The self, or the ego in Western terms is not the true self, which is what exists when all the incidental selves we have accumulated throughout our lives, from our experiences, prejudices, education, dealings with other “selves”, and illnesses, are stripped away. Anatta, or the concept of no-self, is a Buddhist concept, which arises from the observation that the self, or ego, attaches to things and creates bonds, and these things and bonds create conflict and suffering, and therefore, it is only through the closing off of the self, or selves, which leads to a condition of not-self – which then means the elimination of all attachments and suffering. When asked whether there was a self or not-self, the Buddha avoided a direct answer, intimating that choosing either explanation was an extreme view that could make the path of enlightenment impossible. “The Anatta teaching is not a doctrine of no-self, but a not-self strategy for shedding suffering by letting go of its cause, leading to the highest, undying happiness. At that point, questions of self, no-self, and not-self fall aside” (Bhikku).

Masks have been utilized in shamanic practices the world over. Some people use the masks to induce possession of a spirit, the mask resembling the accustomed appear- ance of said spirit or deity; in other rituals, the spirit already possesses the participant, and the masks serves to further maximize the identification of the worshipper with the spirit. “In some cults, when a celebrant begins to display the symptoms of possession, the character of the incarnating entity is discerned by the officiating priests, and that individual is given the appropriate props for the particular god or goddess” (Hine).

In other situations, it is not possession, but rather the expulsion of spirits, exor
cism, that is the primary function of masks. “The repeated presence of masks in conjunction with shamanistic practices - they are often used in exorcisms… - indicates their indispensability in making special contact with an unapprehensible, often radically dissimilar world” (Napier 20). This world, the spirit world, is dominated by three different levels – the upper, the middle, and the lower, all connected by a “world tree” through which the shaman travels in one direction or another, depending on his task.

“The special nature of this other world and the mask’s mediatory role in the sacred and natural opposition is reflected in the very construction of the mask object: it uses a sacred and otherwise unused wood, feathers of a sacred bird…” (Napier 21).

Similarly, in healing rituals, sometimes the shaman officiates wearing a mask, in order to facilitate the shaman’s descent to the underworld to find the sick person’s soul, in other cultures, the shaman does not wear a mask, but sometimes his helpers and apprentices do.

Perhaps it is prudent at this point to consider what constitutes sickness, so that we can better see how masks may mediate illnesses. First, there is the Western allopathic medicine model, which insists diseases are caused by microscopic pathogens, or genetic disorders, and that unexplained diseases, like Morgellon’s disease, are but psychosomatic manifestations of a troubled mind. The cures for these diseases include medicines, vaccinations, surgery, radiation treatment, psychotherapy, etc.

A second model is the homeopathic one, which insists diseases are a product of imbalances within the system, and that through massage, reiki, aromatherapy, dilute homeopathic concoctions, and chiropractic; the body and its various systems can be gently coaxed back into balance.

A third model is that illnesses are caused by witchcraft or curses. This was a common belief in Europe in the Middle Ages, not to mention Massachusetts during the Puritan era, and is prevalent in various “primitive” tribes throughout the world. It was prevalent in Saipan where I taught; several well-educated teachers in our school swore up and down they were cured of their illnesses by Filipino shamans who took away the bad influences that made them sick. This belief existed at the Navajo Methodist Mission School in Farmington, NM, where I had my first art teaching job. The dorm parent for the Jr. High girls was also a Navajo shaman. When kids got sick, the first thing he did was hold a feather in his hand and search the grounds for evidence of witchcraft. When he “felt” its presence, he dug down into the earth, and invariably found a small bundle of the victim’s hair or toenails, or a swatch of their clothing, etc. The cure for this was to destroy the bundle, hold an all night “sing” in a hogan, and trap any evil influences within an elaborate sand painting that was then destroyed at the end of the ceremony.

A fourth model for illnesses is the belief they are a result of the person being possessed by demons or evil spirits. This is the belief that powers the movie The Exorcist, and there are numerous evangelical Christians who, to this very day, practice exorcisms in this country. It exists in the Bible – Jesus casts out demons from a person, and when they cry out they need a body, he allows them to enter the bodies of swine, which immediately run into the sea and drown themselves.

In southern India, demons are thought to possess victims through their eyes, when the victims are in a weakened physical or emotional state. The demonic possession is a disordering of the physical and mental state, resulting in mental confusion and physical illness. The only way to remedy this situation is through exorcism. “What can be called the mask work of major exorcisms aims to restructure this demonic possibility of the body. Demons are not so much cast out or expelled (as in contemporary Christian traditions) as recomposed and placed at the margins of human existence” (Bruce Kapferer).


On this page is a photo of a Sri Lankan demon exorcist mask

Fig. 31 Demon Mask. David Napier, Masks, Transformation, and Paradox. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986. 195.

“Brmhayati in classic Hindu medicine denotes the art of increasing the life-strength in weak people. The Brahmins – these ‘gods in human form’ – are not only a strength in their own right but a life-strength with curing properties…What better way, then, to manifest this power could there possibly be than to invoke the Brahmanical power in rituals wherein the priests displayed their divine kinship through the terrifying mask of a demon god?” (Napier 193). Obviously the disease models which most accommodate the use of masks for healing are the witchcraft and the demonic possession models.

In some cultures, it is the mask itself which possesses the wearer of it and influences the person to do evil, as if a demonic power somehow inhabited the mask. Some people have an irrational fear of masks, perhaps for this very reason. My wife, for example, is petrified by masks and refuses to attend any party or function where people are wearing them – no matter how innocuous the mask.

There is a strange New Mexican folktale that illustrates the supernatural power of masks. Antonio was poor, but he was in love with Lupita, a girl from a wealthy family. When she turned 17, her parents announced a masquerade ball for her.

Antonio reasoned that if he rented a mask and costume, he could go to the ball, and not have to worry about being recognized as the poor, unworthy boy that he was. He went to a shop and rented an elegant black suit with a cape. But when it came to getting the mask, he was out of luck. The shopkeeper explained they had all been rented. Antonio then spied a mask hanging in the corner of the shop. “Oh no, I don’t rent that mask,” the shopkeeper replied. “There is something evil about it.”

Fig. 32 Bull Diablo Mask

The top of the mask looked like a cow’s skull; the eyes were narrow slits. “There was a sharp, thin mustache above a wicked, fang-toothed grin, and it had a long, pointed goatee” (Kurtz 90). Antonio paid for it anyway. He felt very powerful, and arrived at the ball, where he recognized Lupita, despite her costume. Before he could go to her and ask her to dance, her father appeared between them and told him to stay away from his daughter. Antonio only wanted to talk and dance with her, but her father replied, “Impossible. She is engaged to be married.”

Enraged, Antonio grabbed her father by the throat and threw him down, breaking his neck like a twig. Antonio fled the scene and in a nearby grove of trees, dug a hole and buried the mask. An angry mob went to the shopkeeper, and discovered the murderer was Antonio. They stormed his house and found him standing before a mirror, shaking in horror. His face had turned into an identical image of the mask he had buried.

A somewhat similar idea is to be found in pop movie culture, with The Mask starring Jim Carrey. A ne’er do well discovers an ancient mask, and upon donning it, assumes extraordinary (and comic) powers. And it is no accident that he “finds” the mask. In fact, it is the mask itself which finds Jim Carrey.


Fig. 33 Marine shell mask gorget, late prehistoric, So. Dakota.
Fig. 34 Iroquois False Face mask.

Some fossil shells that were turned into masks and discovered in the area of Montana and South Dakota seem to have been used for curing purposes, at least according to local Lakota tribes. Preliminary dating puts their manufacture somewhere in the early 1400’s C.E.

The Iroquois Indians have a False Face Society, wherein they use masks for healing purposes. “The masks are considered to be "living" and are "fed" with tobacco. The design of the masks is somewhat variable, but most share certain features. The masks have long, black or white horse hair. Before the introduction of horses by the Europeans, corn husks and buffalo hair were used. The eyes are deep-set and accented by metal. The noses are bent and crooked. The other facial features are variable. The masks are painted red and black. Basswood is usually used for the masks although other types of wood, like various kinds of pines, are often used.

Fig. 35 Iroquois False Face Mask

“When making a mask, an Iroquois walks through the woods until he is moved by a spirit to carve a mask from the tree. The spirit inspires the unique elements of the mask's design and the resulting product represents the spirit itself. The
masks are carved directly on the tree and only removed when completed. Masks are painted red if they were begun in the morning or black if they were begun in the afternoon. Red masks are thought to be more powerful” (Wikipedia).

Of course, the mere wearing of a mask is unlikely to effect healing. Masks do not exist as a solitary medium for loners. Masks are mainly a social phenomenon, and when the social phenomenon involves healing, it also involves ritual, for this is how the sick person is brought back to the community of health, vis a vis the shaman or medicine man.

“The False Face Society performs a ritual to promote health using the masks. The ceremony usually contains a telling of the False Face myth, an invocation to the spirits using tobacco, the main False Face ritual, and a feast at the end. During the main part of the ritual, the False Face members go through every house in the entire town searching for disease and illness. The False Face members also use turtle shell rattles, a reference to Iroquois cosmology which sees our world resting on the back of a giant turtle. The arrival of the False Faces is heralded by another medicine society that uses corn husk masks. If a sick person is found, a healing ritual is performed using tobacco and singing. The tobacco is burned, and the ashes are blown over the sick person. The community then gathers at the long house where the False Faces enter and move towards the central fire. Here individuals may request healing. The ritual continues with dancing and ends with a ceremonial ash blowing and a feast” (Wikipedia).

Fig. 36 Biombo mask. West Kasai, Zaïre. Wood, pigments, headed nails. A Mbuyu mask.

A certain kind of African mask called mbuyu has the power to heal when worn during a dance to heal people. Certain mbuyu masks, such as those representing the chief, the hunter and the female mask Pota, have the power to heal when worn during a dance performed around a sick person. Someone healed in this way might carry a miniature ivory mask, a replica of the mask that healed him. Mbuyu means “baobab," (as in the baobab tree).

In the Pacific Northwest, there was a long tradition of mask carving among the many coastal tribes, stretching from Washington to Alaska. For most tribes, masks were
made to illustrate myths and stories; to illustrate myths and stories; they also announced the owner’s status, wealth, place in the community, and were essential items in a potlatch.

Shamanism was also present in all these tribes, but in only one tribe was the use of masks by shamans for curing observed – the Tlingit.
The main function of the shaman in these tribes was healing. Healing séances included drumming, which “gradually built into a crescendo. It was believed that spirits were attracted by these sounds and would come to aid the shaman” (Wardwell 47).
Fig. 37 Masked Tlingit Shaman. Allen Wardwell. Tangible Visions, Northwest Coast Indian Shamanism and its Art. NewYork: Monacelli Press, 1996.


Fig. 38 Moon Mask. Gary Wyatt, Spirit Faces. S.F., CA: Chronicle Books, 1995.

The method of curing depended on the illness. If a disease had “introduced itself into the patient, activities were directed to removing it from the body. If it was believed that a witch had caused some disease by introduction of a foreign body, this too had to be removed from the afflicted and the evildoer had to be identified…If, however, it was thought that the disease had resulted because the soul had strayed from the body either by being attracted away by spirits or by having been frightened out, the shaman would have to locate it and return it to the host” (Wardwell 48). Hence, the shaman’s journey to the underworld through the roots of the great world tree, to find the wandering soul of the distressed person.

The protruding tongue was a feature of many Northwest masks, “the organ through which life force is transferred at death” (Jonaitis 54). The tongue could also cure, and “there are Tlingit maskettes with slim, elongated tongues that were touched to the ailing parts of a patient” (Wardwell 84). The tongue of the masks shown here (Figs. 39 and 40) was used for the same purpose.


Fig. 39 Tlingit Shamanistic Mask. Allen Wardwell. Tangible Visions, Northwest Coast Indian Shamanism and its Art. , New York: Monacelli Press, 1996.

Fig. 40. Tlingit Shamanistic Mask. Allen Wardwell, Ibid.

Some of the more elaborate Tlingit and Kwakiutl masks opened up, through clever means of carving, hinges and hidden strings, to reveal one or even several masks hidden within the main mask, rather like a series of nested Russian dolls. It gives the effect of viewing “false selves” as explained by Buddhism, which is an interesting thought.

Because I was studying the nature of masks and healing, I decided to make a couple of masks that might be used for healing. I did some research, trying to find a Western equivalent of a Tlingit or Iroquois healing mask that I could feel comfortable with, as far as the mythology of the mask is concerned. I fit into the Judeo-Christian framework, so although I mentioned Buddhist and other concepts, they were not native to my thinking. So I had to find something that could actually resonate with me.

Fig. 41 Asclepius. Life size. Mask by John Halliday







Fig. 42 Green Man. Life size. Mask by John Halliday

The first mask (Fig. 41) I made was that of Asclepius. Asclepius was the Greek god of medicine. “Asclepius embarked…on a career that at times proved him a perceptive curer of mental dis- orders, while at others showed him so strong at curing phys ical ailments that he was ultimately killed by the thunderbolt of Zeus, who feared that in raising the dead to life, Asclepius would free the human race from the bonds of death” (Napier 78). I painted the mask to look as if it was made of marble.
The second mask (Fig. 42) I made was that of the Green Man, an archetypal figure often seen in many Gothic cathedrals, who was a symbol of fertility and resurrection, and was related to the Horned God of pagans, and thence to the Celtic Cernunnos and the Greek god Pan.

“Mythical figures such as Cernunnos, Sylvanus, Derg Corra, Green George, Jack in the green, John Barleycorn, Robin Goodfellow, Puck and the Green Knight all partake of the Green Man's nature; it has also been suggested that the story of Robin Hood was born of the Green Man mythology. A more modern embodiment might be found in Peter Pan, who enters the civilized world from a nether land, not only clothed in green but wearing leaves as well.” (Wikipedia).

Naturally, I assumed that healing properties would be inherent in such a robust, verdant character, especially concerning his energetic character, contrasted with the marked lack of energy I have suffered from my whole life.

Unfortunately, neither mask has “come to life” at this point, and it’s easy to see why, as I mentioned earlier that masks were not a solitary phenomenon, but a social one. I imagine such a “coming to life” or an “awakening” could take place under such ritualistic conditions such as an “Iron Man” gathering, where half-naked men chant and beat drums around a forest campfire at night in the ultimate male bonding experience. Or perhaps such an awakening could occur in a wild, no-holds-barred Carnival or Mardi gras atmosphere. If I knew any pagans or Wiccans, I’m sure some of their ritualistic ceremonies could do the same thing. But merely wearing the masks around the house is an exercise in stumbling over furniture, and futility.

Masks are considered a masquerade by some, a hiding of the truth, a wall to hide behind. To them, the mask is a lie. “But very often they tell a deeper truth. The mask frees the true self, lures it out of its repression, and creates a safe house for it to live in. …For most of us, it is never really safe – or true – to take off the mask. We prefer, rather, merely to glimpse the reality through the mask, the myth” (Wendy Doniger, “The Masques of Gods and Demons” 241, Shulman).