pseudo spirit

Art and the realm of the spirit have always been connected. Many art objects have operated as spiritual focus points and were made too be such. Such art objects would be used in religious rites and ceremonies, or for the purposes of healing, communing with other spirits, foretelling the future, acting as wards to keep evil spirits at bay, and to attain the power of other spirits among other uses. Several of the tribes and cultures of the American southwest made incredibly elaborate sand paintings to heal the ill. These works took tremendous amounts of time and energy only to be wiped away for the sake of said ailed person. The gothic gargoyles and many totems (not really meaning pacific northwest) were meant to drive off demonic beings and warn spiritually dangerous places.
People all around the world made necklaces of things like bear or lion claws not only to show off their individual courage in taking the animals but also to gain some of their power as well. The best example for this I can think of is the Norse berserker warriors. (where we get the term going berserk) These men would put on the skin of a wolf or bear and become possessed by the animal’s spirit for fighting in war. One can observe the same phenomenon in several Native American cultures, especially among some of the tribes of the Pacific Northwest. For certain rites and rituals the craftsmen would construct very creative masks, very stylized and formalized, of the heads of different animals of importance like the bear. Impressively some of these masks could be opened up by the dancer wearing the mask in order to show another elaborately carved, often human, face. Once the dancer or shaman was fully adorned the person would either symbolically play the part of the animal or spirit and the performance is like a prayer, or the dancer actually (tribe dependant) become said creature or become an avatar for the spirit of the animal.
In rites such as these, we see some of the earliest and most earnest forms of performance art. Even the simple dream-catcher is a charm meant to have an impact on our spiritual affairs. By catching some dreams and letting others go by into our minds they affect us. Drums used for ceremony would be decorated and demon masks carved out of wood served ritual roles in West Africa (where I grew up) a place where little if any piece of art was made without some blessing or curse bestowed upon it. This is the reason why I become discouraged with many people crafting things to look like objects made by shamans because they look cool while disregarding or not believing in the spiritual consequences of such pieces. Artworks such as those mentioned should not be approached frivolously their spiritual power is inseparable from their beauty. At the end of the day it reminds me of the way people treat bible stories.