Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture - Walter Mariko Namba, Fridman Eva Jane Neumann 2004
FOREWORD
When Mircea Eliade wrote his major work on shamanism in 1951, he set himself the goal of reading every existing publication on the subject. He compiled a list of some six hundred items, the largest part consisting of articles in Russian. By the time Eliade recounted this memory in 1985, he reckoned that more than 2,000 book-length studies of shamanism had appeared in the intervening thirty-four years as well as countless scholarly articles in many languages—more than an individual can cover. Eliade’s Shamanism, still in print today, intensified enthusiasm for the subject by challenging the prevalent view that shamanism was a mental illness. Instead, he interpreted the dramatic trances, ecstatic visions, and extravagant behaviors as signs of a life-transforming spiritual experience with a wide range of profound consequences beneficial to self and society.
Far from sating the appetite for shamanism, the amazing surge of interest in shamanism among pundits and in pop culture over the past two decades has generated greater interest still—a curious fate for a religious expression once deemed archaic, pathological, and approaching oblivion. No longer can one person fully absorb the explosion of ideas about shamanism coming from such distinct fields as, for example, neurobiology, pharmacology, and gender studies.
Shamanism serves, in this respect, as a parable for religious life more broadly in our day. Even as the death knell of religions sounded in the halls of the academy and in other strongholds of secular policy throughout the twentieth century—based on psychological, economic, or sociological theo-ries—religious fervor continued in circles disvalued by scholars or, more remarkably, renewed itself in the face of prevailing efforts at secularization. As with so many aspects of religious life, a mix of intellectual curiosity and spiritual seeking has churned up a sea of information about shamanism and produced a flood of interpretations regarding its practices, experiences, and overall meaning. The study of religion and shamanism has grown apace with the awareness of the vitality of religious life. The subject of shamanism has long called for an encyclopedic treatment, but the subject has proven increasingly daunting due as much to the breadth of its manifestations as to the difficulty of specifying its precise nature.
The great accomplishment of Mariko Walter and Eva Fridman is twofold. They first of all embrace the rich and fascinating complexity of shamanism, assembling in one place the evidence from cultures throughout the world and presenting this rich diversity in arrangements accessible to scholars and general readers alike. In the second place, they include the full range of important perspectives on the topic, inviting the best ethnographic specialists to describe what they know about shamanism from firsthand field studies, as well as asking philosophical writers and religious thinkers to reflect more broadly on the meaning of such behaviors and beliefs. Ingeniously, they have also commissioned creative commentaries on the relationship of shamanic experience to such distinct domains as dreams and drama, art and music, clothing and governance. In this landmark new work, Walter and Fridman take care to address the broad cultural interest in shamanism and,
especially, its connection to healing and the extraordinary spiritual adventures that enlarge the sense of oneself and the world.
Both Walter and Fridman specialize in the study of Central Asia, which holds a special place for the understanding of shamanism. And yet their collaboration for this project began on the other side of the globe, at Harvard University, where both scholars served as fellows at the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions. As director of the Harvard Center from 1990 to 2003, I saw their first outline for the project and have followed their developing plans. I remain impressed by their open-architecture approach to the subject, an openness that allows them to begin with broad working definitions so as to include within the encyclopedia the full press of conflicting opinions about the nature and significance of shamanism. And I remain impressed as well with their thorough knowledge of the subject, beginning with their linguistic abilities, which lets them work not only in Western European and Central Asian languages but in Russian, Chinese, and Japanese as well. Their complete familiarity with shamanism extends from their own field work to their control of the historical and anthropological literature on the subject. Their unusual capacities and dedication have produced a wonderful work well suited to the new realizations about shamanism. No doubt this encyclopedia will benefit all interested readers and serve as a spark for further exploration of one of humankind’s richest spiritual heritages.
Lawrence E. Sullivan Professor of the History of Religions The University of Notre Dame 14 September 2004
PREFACE
Shamanism is a living, vital phenomenon, one that interests a wide range of people. Today it is clear that shamanism, as an area of academic study, is a rich and rapidly evolving field. This encyclopedia represents a wide range of perspectives and approaches of over 180 contributors according to their academic specialties. Thus it is not the intent of this encyclopedia to present a homogenized picture, either of the phenomenon of shamanism or of the present state of shamanism as a field of study. The reader will find the story of the development of the field and some of the most pertinent theoretical and historical issues addressed in the Introduction, as well as in related entries.
Shamans are globally distributed and shamanism is an ancient spiritual practice. Thus this encyclopedia covers this most human spiritual endeavor in its worldwide manifestations, with the goal of developing an inclusive and multidimensional picture of shamanism as currently and historically encountered throughout the world. The scope of the entries in these two volumes is broad: the reader will find considerations of the earliest indications of shamanism in rock art, of early historical writings that portray various aspects of shamanistic worship and practice, of later manifestations attested to by European and Russian ethnographers, and of current research in the field all over the world. The reader will be able to see how shamanism has developed and changed over the centuries, allowing shamanic practices to remain significant in present-day cultures. Some of the entries focus on universal aspects of shamanism, but of course shamanism is not one uniform phenomenon over a wide range of time and space; each culture lays its own imprint on the belief system, practices, and outward appearances of its shamanic practitioners. For this reason, in the majority of the entries the focus is on the way shamanism is practiced within a particular culture, and to provide an understanding of the cultural specifics of this phenomenon.
Most basically, shamanism can be defined as a religious belief system in which the shaman is the specialist in knowledge. The shaman knows the spirit world and human soul through “ecstasy,” the power of an altered state of consciousness, or trance, which is used to make a connection to the world of the spirits in order to bring about benefits to the community. Mircea Eliade, in his book Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, saw the essence of shamanism in the techniques by which the shaman is able to travel into the supernatural world in a state of ecstasy induced by drumming or other means. The broader definition of shamanism adopted for the purposes of this encyclopedia includes not only the kind of ecstatic relationship to the spiritual world involved in such jour-neys—the kind in which the shaman deliberately goes to meet the spirits and is in control of them or “masters” them—but also the phenomenon of possession, in which the spirits take the initiative, and the shaman is “possessed” by the spirits who then speak through the shaman as a vessel.
The hallmarks of shamanism as a religious phenomenon are most clearly seen, historically and currently, in Siberia, Mongolia, and the Inner Asian geographical area, an area often referred to as Eurasia. As noted by a number of scholars in the field, shamanism as a phenomenon or system of
religious belief is most closely allied with hunting and gathering societies. The human need to exert some control or influence over the natural world on which subsistence depended provided the impulse for the development of the concepts and practices of shamanism. The cosmology of hunters and gatherers included deities who could influence weather and the harvesting of flora and particularly fauna; the shaman was a member of the community who had special abilities to influence the deities responsible for the well-being of the group. Only the shaman, in a state of trance, was able to offer the appropriate prayers and entreaties to the deities, so that the deity, as master of the animals, would feel honored and let more animals be caught, or, in later pastoral societies, so that the deities in control of the weather would make it auspicious for the growth of grain or grass in order to feed the flocks. In other words, in a society in which human beings were dependent on natural forces for their sustenance, it was important to continually interact with the natural world, a world seen as driven by spiritual forces, so that these forces would act in a benevolent manner toward human beings.
Thus shamanism in what is generally considered its most classical form was based on a particular cosmology and belief system, one in which the community depended on the shaman, a person with exceptional powers and abilities, to communicate while in trance with spirits and deities for the benefit of the community. Even in Siberia and Inner Asia, this classical form did not last; hunters and gatherers became pastoral nomads or, due to political pressures, settled in villages and towns. In Russia, for example, the emphasis in the previous century and currently is on the shaman as healer of the soul and body of individuals, as well as healer of the community at large in the performance of rituals for the general well-being.
Although many scholars believe that shamanism is an ancient and universal belief system held by hunting and gathering peoples, there is only limited evidence of its most ancient aspects. This encyclopedia includes several entries on those ancient practices of shamanism based on evidence from archaeology and historical documentation. Most of the historical information on shamanism dates back to practices and practitioners who were observed and studied in the nineteenth century as missionaries, explorers, and finally anthropologists began to take note of religious practices of indigenous peoples, practices that up to that time had received scant Western attention. Therefore, many of the entries reflect shamanism as it was practiced at the beginning of the twentieth century; contributors often also describe the current state of shamanism in these cultural groups. A number of essays (included under “General Themes in World Shamanism”) deal with new constructions of shamanism.
The organizational principles of the encyclopedia are covered in more detail in the last section of the Introduction, but some preliminary account may be given here. Because one important purpose of this work is to provide a cross-cultural view of shamanism in its universal as well as its particular and local aspects, the encyclopedia has two parts. The general entries, found under the title “General Themes in World Shamanism” in volume 1, offer information on broader aspects of shamanism; the rest of the encyclopedia consists of regional entries, which examine shamanism within a particular cultural group or region, providing an in-depth understanding of the particular and local manifestations of shamanism. The criteria for selection of topics were developed in consultation with scholars of shamanism from all over the world.
The regional entries are grouped into ten sections on a geographical basis: North America; Central and South America; Europe; Eurasia; Korea and Japan; China and Sino-Asia; South Asia, the Himalayas, and Tibet; Southeast Asia; Australasia and Oceania; and Africa. Within each of these regions, there are certain cultural commonalities in the concepts and practices of shamanism. Consequently, this geographical approach provides a broader and more comprehensive view of these particular shamanic complexes, reflected in the regional overview with which each section begins. The relation of shamanic belief systems and practices to their particular geographic and cultural locales can be seen in the specific rituals and prayers used, and in the way shamans interact with their communities. Since shamanism is community-based, shamans receive their sanction, and any temporal powers they may possess, from their communities. Shamans are therefore closely interwoven in community life, even though they also stand outside it as spiritual specialists. In the
entries in the regional section, the specific beliefs and practices of the shamans treated have accordingly been discussed within their geographical, historical, and cultural context.
The reader will notice that there has been no attempt to provide the same number of entries in each region. Thus, for example, the region of Eurasia has the largest number of entries; as the area generally considered the core of shamanism, it has received the most attention from scholars in the field. These entries offer a detailed view of classical aspects of shamanism, as well as current adaptations in the post-Soviet world. Even in Eurasia, however, there are many cultural groups that are not represented. Considerations of inclusion were based not only on size constraints and the need for some degree of balance with all other regions, but also on the principle of selecting the most representative and important shamanic complexes. Some were excluded simply because they were so similar to others that were included, and hence it was thought that the material would be too repetitive. At the same time, in some cultures such interesting work has been done on specific aspects of shamanism, such as masks or music, that separate entries have been included on those aspects. In the other regions, such as Europe, shamanic complexes are far more limited and scarce, and hence fewer entries are included.
The largest number of entries fall under the title “General Themes in World Shamanism.” This large grouping includes many important aspects of shamanism that can usefully be studied across cultures, not only as part of a specific cultural complex. For instance, there are entries such as “Bioenergetic Healing,” “Divination,” “Healing and Shamanism,” “Soul Retrieval,” and “Transformation,” to name a few examples. Thus “General Themes in World Shamanism” provides a more inclusive, less regional view of shamanism, not only to allow the reader to look at the phenomena cross-culturally, but also to make possible an understanding of the more universal nature of certain practices and beliefs. The general entries may also fill in gaps with respect to particular cultural aspects that may not have been discussed in some of the culture-specific entries. Where subtopics such as costume, music, literature, dance, or specific types of healers have not been treated for some cultures, some of these absences may be compensated for, when scholarly research is available, in the “General Themes in World Shamanism” section.
We have made every effort to be as inclusive, complete, and up-to-date as possible within the confines of a two-volume encyclopedia. Shamanism is, however, an evolving and rapidly changing phenomenon, most obviously in areas where religion was repressed in recent historical memory, though not only there. At the same time that new forms of shamanism have emerged, new research on historical complexes has become possible, as documentation becomes accessible in less repressive times, and so understanding of earlier and contemporary forms of shamanism has increased. There are many new scholars working in all areas. This encyclopedia provides an introduction to a dynamic field, in which relevant new material allows constant revision of our present knowledge.
This encyclopedia is intended for the general reader as well as for the scholarly community. It is intended to be useful for a range of readers, from the high school student who has an interest in exploring these questions, to college and graduate school students and scholars in other fields who want to understand and explore this topic. Bibliographic references at the end of each entry are designed to lead the reader into further research, and cross references to other relevant subjects accompany each entry. An alphabetical list of entries, found on page xxix, will assist the reader in locating cross-referenced topics.
Eva Jane Neumann Fridman
INTRODUCTION
The richness of the field of study called shamanism is obvious in many ways. Researchers in the field come from areas as diverse as history, anthropology, psychology, religious studies, sociology, medicine, and art. The phenomena studied are equally diverse. The use of the term shamanism might give the false impression that the phenomenon so labeled is a single fixed religious system, which exists in various societies in the world. In reality the term shamanism covers a number of beliefs and rituals, which are continuously changing and evolving as new historical and religious situations arise in different societies. It can be argued that it would be more appropriate to speak of shamanisms, related dynamic religious processes, but at least the term is usually written with a small initial s, rather than a capital S, as would be the case if it were the name of a specific religion.
In the Preface, a broad working definition of shamanism is given; it is defined as a religious belief system in which the shaman is a specialist in the knowledge required to make a connection to the world of the spirits in order to bring about benefits for the other members of the community. Later in this Introduction, the controversies associated with the definition of shamanism will be handled in more detail, but those controversies will be more meaningful in the context of a historical perspective on the way the West has come to know shamanism.
A Historical Perspective
Ancient Societies and Shamanism
Many scholars have seen evidences of shamanistic elements in prehistoric and ancient societies; among the societies covered in this encyclopedia are ancient Egypt, Iran, North Asia, and South India, as well as the Celtic world and pagan Europe as a whole. Any discussion of shamanism in prehistoric and ancient societies must rely to a great extent on archaeology, and here as in so many areas of study related to shamanism there is great controversy. David Whitley’s entry on “Archaeology and Shamanism” introduces the work that has been done in this controversial area, stimulated by the idea that shamanism may well be the oldest religion of hunter-gatherers. He discusses the three types of evidence used by those who work in the field, namely data on hallucinogenic plants in the archaeological record, evidence derived from a study of the iconography and symbolism of ancient rock art, and evidence based on other types of ritual or ceremonial remains.
The work done on the symbolism associated with rock art in Eurasia, the Americas, and southern Africa has certainly created heated debate between the archeologists who promote the idea that Paleolithic rock art provides the first evidence of shamanism in art and those who oppose such a notion. J. David Lewis-Williams and Tomas Dowson (1988), as well as others, see in this ancient art what they call “entoptic images” (on which Lewis-Williams has written an entry for this encyclopedia), which are derived from the human nervous system, as it functions during certain altered
states of consciousness. This neuropsychological model has been applied to various imagery, ranging from northwest European tomb art to Australian rock art.
On the other side, scholars such as Alice Kehoe (2000), Roberte Hamayon (2001), and Paul Bahn (2001) have criticized such approaches as unsatisfactory for understanding prehistoric rock art. As for the field as a whole, Whitley admits that archaeological studies of religion in general are relatively new and that this is still a somewhat underdeveloped field. Esther Jacobson’s entry, “Ancient North Asian Shamanism,” is also written from a critical point of view; she objects to any free subjective interpretation of rock art images such as great moose, elk, or so-called “bird-women” as shamanistic. She believes those images refer to cults of fertility and rebirth earlier than and unrelated to shamanism.
Other attempts to show shamanistic features of early religions extend to pagan Europe. Michael Strmiska’s entry, “Paganism in Europe,” discusses the efforts scholars have made to reconstruct the pagan religions of pre-Christian Europe, which display shamanistic elements of great interest. One specific area that has gotten a good bit of scholarly attention has been the Celtic world, discussed by Tina Fields in the entry “’Celtic Shamanism’: Pagan Celtic Spirituality.” Fields finds in Greco-Roman sources and early Celtic literature (folk songs, fairy tales, and the like) ample evidence of shamanistic elements in Celtic religion; there are descriptions of practitioners and patterns of magical initiation, as well as of experiences of deep mystical inspiration and understanding.
Thus, archaeologists and religious historians as well as folklorists have used the available data to reconstruct early religions and to find shamanistic elements in ancient societies. Such reconstructions inevitably depend to a great extent on each scholar’s interpretations, an approach apt to trigger the criticism of some anthropologists and others who would like to stick to a “scientific” approach to the study of shamanism, or to adhere only to culture-specific evidence that can be supported by ethnographic research.
The First Encounter: Reports of the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century
In looking at shamanism from a historical perspective, we have first considered the evidence that can be gleaned of shamanistic elements in ancient and prehistoric cultures. Yet the more direct accounts of contact with shamans in “primitive” cultures can be found in the reports of Europeans who actually traveled to the remote regions for their own personal reasons. Jeremy Narby and Francis Huxley (2001) have compiled these Western accounts, the earliest of which date from the sixteenth century, in their recent book, Shamans through Time: 500 Years on the Path to Knowledge. According to them, the first such reports is given in the accounts of the Spanish navigatorhistorian, Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, published in 1535. He observed that some old men among the inhabitants of Hispaniola (the island currently comprising Haiti and the Dominican Republic) used tobacco in order to communicate with spirits and worship the Devil (Narby and Huxley 2001, 11—12). The French priest Andre Thevet similarly reported in 1557 that the natives in Brazil invoked the evil spirit in certain ceremonies. Yet Thevet’s report was not completely negative; according to him, these shamans also provided answers to community problems and learned “the most secrete things of nature” (15).
In the seventeenth century, when Russians started colonizing Siberia, the Russian priest Avvakum Petrovich became one of the first observers to use the word shaman in print, in his autobiography published in 1672. He told of finding Siberian shamans who claimed to communicate with spirits and who put on trickster performances such as pretending to stab themselves with knives. He called the shaman “villain of a magician” (18). Denis Diderot (1765), a French writerphilosopher who was one of the editors of that great work of the Enlightenment, the Encyclopedie, defined Siberian shamans as “imposters,” who function as priests, jugglers, sorcerers, and doctors who claim to have an influence on the devil. According to Diderot, shamans “perform tricks that seem supernatural to an ignorant and superstitious people” (32). He described them in their role as jugglers as making “a pact with the genies” while drumming, screaming, yelling, singing, and smoking. These shaman figures “persuade the majority of people that they have ecstatic transports,” but these transports are really trickery (34).
A French Jesuit missionary, Joseph Lafitau (1724), reported two types of shamans among the Iroquois and Hurons in Canada: Evil shamans who consorted with the devil to harm people, and “jugglers,” or “diviners,” who communicated with the spirits for the good of the community. He acknowledged that shamans were not just preoccupied with magic and trickery, but also explained dreams and exposed “the secret desire of the soul” (24). Thus he can be seen, as Narby and Huxley noted, as an authentically enlightened precursor of modern anthropology because he admitted that there was something more to shamans’ practices than just trickery.
According to Gloria Flaherty, in her Shamanism and the Eighteenth Century, the shaman during this early period was being described with the word giocolare in Italian, jongleur in French, Gaukler in German, and wizard in English (Flaherty 1992, 6). Before the end of the eighteenth century, however, the Siberian Tungus word shaman became the common term in the West (7).
The intellectuals of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment held to a scientific methodology based on objectivity and rationality, yet, as Flaherty noted, an interest in irrationalism, supernaturalism, and romanticism coexisted with the prevalent humanism and scientific determinism. The second half of the eighteenth century was marked by academic expeditions, undertaken in the attempt to understand shamanism through scientific observation in the field and the collection of native drugs for the analysis of data (67).
Among the scholars and explorers who led expeditions to Siberia were several notable European scholars. One of these scholars was Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt (1685—1735), commissioned by Peter the Great, who learned about indigenous illnesses, especially epidemics. Like many other Western observers, he regarded shamanism as “nothing but lies and trickery and saw no scientific value in it whatsoever,” and his report clearly indicated his position as a Eurocentric European scientist (Flaherty 1992, 48). Similarly the Russian botanist Stepan Krasheninnikov, who obtained and analyzed the substances various shamans used to induce ecstasy in Kamchatka, in a report published in 1755 called shamans “absurd” and “ridiculous” (Narby and Huxley 2001, 36).
Some later Enlightenment scholars showed more understanding of shamanism. The German critic, theologian, and philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder, in a work published in 1785, made clear that he regarded shamans as imposters, but he also stressed that imaginary representations among tribal people, who were misunderstood in the past, should be considered valuable. He explained that an understanding of the nature of imagination is important for understanding shamanism, since this phenomenon involves myriad relationships between mind and body, which depend on the workings of the brain and nerves, as human illnesses demonstrate (Narby and Huxley 2001, 37).
Scholars of many different disciplines in the eighteenth century were fascinated by shamanism. Whether they were philosophers, missionaries, writers, archaeologists, physicians, botanists or ethnographers, these observers from different backgrounds in the West reported their perceptions of shamanism, despite their limited understandings of the religion and culture of the peoples they observed. This trend toward broad interest in shamanism continued into the nineteenth and twentieth century, and the framework for discussion about shamanism widened as shifts in methodology occurred. One of the major shifts was that both anthropologists and psychologists in Europe and America entered with full force into the study of shamanism.
Pioneers of Cultural Ethnography
In the early twentieth century, Franz Boas (1858—1942), often described as the father of American anthropology, created the foundation for a holistic approach to the studies of different cultures based on ethnographic documentation. In his approach to anthropology, he stressed the need for understanding a particular culture through many disciplines, such as archaeology, psychology, geography, biology, linguistics, and mythology. He believed that an ethnography that made use of all these perspectives would provide a more objective and comprehensive understanding of shamanism, since shamanism, like any cultural phenomenon, is the product of a cultural system as an integrated whole.
Boas studied the indigenous peoples of the Canadian and American northwest coast, such as the Alaskan Inuit and Siberian ethnic groups. In his expedition to the North Pacific (1897—1902), Waldemar Bogoras and Waldemar Jochelson accompanied Boas and reported on the shamanic practices of Arctic peoples. Their findings indicated that these shamans were of the “psychopathic” type, who performed a specialized function in tribal society (Grim 1983, 17). They also observed that this Arctic shamanism was based on archaic religious experience, the practice of which had indeed originated in North Asia. In other words, Boas and his students took a diffusionist view of cultural phenomena: Shamanism passes from one culture to another and changes its forms, functions, and meanings. In other research on Native American societies in the first half of the twentieth century, Robert Lowie in his study of the Crow Indians advanced the theory that shamanism is one of the significant facets of “primordial” religion, and Paul Radin described the “psychopathic” condition of the shamans of the eastern Woodland tribes, especially Siouan Winnebago (Grim 1983, 18).
Whatever the limitations of their approach, the significant point is that these early twentiethcentury researchers were the first anthropologists who seriously studied the religious phenomena of tribal societies in North America, despite the inappropriateness of the terminology they used (such as “primordial,” “primitive,” or “psychopathic”). Following Boas’s example, Knud Rasmussen also studied shamans and shamanic rituals among the Inuit of Greenland and Alaska in the 1920s and 1940s, and his work provides useful historical data for Inuit shamans at that time. Following the American anthropological tradition initiated by Boas, most of the entries in this encyclopedia are written based on ethnographic studies from the authors’ own fieldwork and other relevant empirical materials, which have been analyzed and interpreted from the perspectives of the respective cultural traditions.
Russian Studies of Shamanism
The development of Russian studies of shamanism followed quite different paths from the work in America, although both considered ethnographic and empirical data as centrally important. As Siberia started to be intensively colonized by the Russians, starting in the seventeenth century, shamanism in the region was suppressed by the Christian missionaries as part of the process of colonial Russification. During the Soviet era (at least from the 1920s to the 1970s), shamans were severely persecuted directly by the government, through social isolation, purges, and extermination policies. This persecution was based on the cultural evolutionary theories of Marx and Engels, who viewed shamanism, like any forms of religion, as superstition and destined to end in alienation from the common good. Being treated as class enemies, thousands of shamans were arrested and deported from their homes, often dying in gulags, with a subsequent loss in the rich oral tradition of Siberian shamanism (Glavatskaya 2001, 245).
In such a political climate, Soviet scholars of shamanism described shamans in rather negative terms, as hypnotizers of susceptible believers, for example, or malicious deceivers, or rich exploiters of their people (Balzer 1997, xiv). In Soviet museums, Marjorie Balzer, an American scholar, noted that shaman figures with insane and frightening appearances had been made and displayed in public as evil religious figures. Another limitation of Soviet scholarship, noted by Ake Hultkrantz, was that their studies contained very few references to sources published outside the former Soviet Union (probably due to lack of access to this research); hence much Russian scholarly work gives the impression that shamanism only existed in the Soviet area, with some extension to Lapland and northern Alaska and Canada (Hultkrantz 1993, 4). Nevertheless, Soviet researchers did record and gather ethnographic materials as historical data or for the purpose of comparative cultural studies. These numerous data were catalogued and kept in the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) Museum and other museums, though without much analysis. Yet Vilmos Dioszegi, a notable Hungarian scholar on Siberian Tungus shamanism, realized the urgency of keeping the records of disappearing religions and used the vital data for his interpretive studies for shamanism in North Asia (Grim 1983, 22).
In this encyclopedia, many entries have benefited from extensive Russian ethnographic records for their analysis of shamanistic practices in North Asia. Elena Boikova’s entry, for example, “Funeral Rites in Eurasian Shamanism,” is largely based on Russian archives of the nineteenth century.
By the end of the twentieth century, Russian scholars were taking shamanic practice seriously, and many indigenous scholars had also started to study their own traditions in order to seek their own shamanic heritage. This drastic change in attitudes toward shamans and shamanism in Siberia and Central Asia was, as Balzer has explained, the result of wider societal changes that made all religious faith valid again after many years of repression (Balzer 1997, xiv). Especially in the past couple of decades, as in the West, multiple approaches to shamanism have been welcomed; linguists, ethnographers, folklorists, and historians have all contributed to the study of shamanism in Russia and the independent nations of the former Soviet Union. This trend is evident in the many entries under Eurasia in this encyclopedia. These entries make clear that Eurasian shamans in the past provided healing, psychotherapy, and socioreligious leadership for their communities, as well as entertaining ritual performances.
Eliade and Phenomenological Approaches to Shamanism
Mircea Eliade is one of the most influential figures in academic studies of shamanism. The extent of his influence can be seen simply in the number of contributors to this encyclopedia who have included his prominent work, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, in the references for their entries. Yet Eliade was not an anthropologist and did not base his research on his own fieldwork; rather, as a historian of religion, he was concerned with comprehending the religious meaning of shamanism. Using his language skills, he was able to utilize a variety of sources from many different European languages regarding shamanism that were available as of 1951 (the year of the first publication of his classic work in French). Eliade’s contribution was to provide insight into shamanism as an ecstatic technique used to contact the world of spirits.
His methodology is a hermeneutical study of religious phenomena based on an interpretation of the data in a larger cultural context. Following Rudolf Otto, the renowned scholar of phenomenology of religion, Eliade related the religious experience to the divine, or the sacred, which has a profound effect on life. For Eliade, ethnography is the interpretation of cultures, but not a system of scientific laws to be discovered. The sacred is accessible only through an interpretative, or hermeneutical, technique, which involves the discernment of meanings.
This hermeneutic approach to shamanism or any religion is something that Alice Kehoe, to take one example of an anthropologist committed to fieldwork, considers too romantic and confusing. Kehoe has criticized Eliade for “collecting second-hand data to picture and project ancient religion” and for undermining “the dirty fieldwork of more menial producers of data” (Kehoe 2000, 1). Contesting such criticism, Hultkrantz has argued that anthropology might not provide an appropriate tool for theorizing shamanism, since the goals of anthropology are to understand historically situated and culturally mediated social practice (Hultkrantz 1993, 309). Hultkrantz argued that a phenomenological approach is more appropriate to shamanism, given its articulation of the human experience of the supernatural world and its power.
The academic debate between the anthropologists who emphasize empirical data and the religious scholars of phenomenology still goes on. In practice, most of the entries here are based on interpretative analysis of available empirical data or ethnographies and do not present any serious theoretical dilemma explicitly, but an awareness of the variety of theoretical assumptions in the field should help the reader see each entry in context. Whatever shortcomings Eliade’s book on shamanism has in terms of the use of particular data, grouping criteria, and the evaluation of sources, Eliade has inspired numerous anthropologists and religious writers, including many of the editors who worked on the various regions and the writers of the entries, and it remains as one of the most pivotal books on shamanism from a hermeneutical perspective.
Other Theoretical Issues
Perhaps the main issue shared by almost all the authors of entries in this encyclopedia focuses on the definition of the term shamanism, although many of the entries do not explicitly mention this issue. How to define shamanism has been one of the main problems for researchers in the field from the very beginning of the study of shamanism in association with the study of magic, animism, and “primitive” religion. The first and arguably most basic question was whether shamanism was simply a form of magic or whether it could be considered a religion. This theoretical question is addressed here as a background for the complex definition issues regarding shamanism.
Is Shamanism a Religion? The Magic vs. Religion Debate
Already in the nineteenth century, scholars of shamanism were concerned with the question of whether shamanism is magic or a religion. As discussed earlier, some researchers consider ancient shamanism as the original form of human religion, or at least an early form of religion. Anthropologists and sociologists looked at small-scale societies to understand the evolutionary development of religious phenomena. For example, Edward Tylor (1871) regarded shamanism (which he called animism) as the earliest form of religion, since it involves a belief that inanimate objects have souls (Langdon 1989, 54). For some, shamanism is the substratum beneath all the world’s religions, and “shamanism is understood not only in its culture-specific manifestations but also cross-culturally, comparatively, as a near-universal phenomenon” (Furst 1994, 4). Peter Furst also made the point that shamanism and shamans coexist with other forms of religious belief, rituals, and professional priests.
The German anthropologist Wilhelm Schmidt (1931), holding an evolutionary view of religion, considered that shamanism was a primitive religion that (at least in “advanced” civilizations) eventually evolved to a higher monotheistic religion. Similarly James Frazer (1854—1941) believed that shamanistic magic was an early and false form of science and had to be replaced by a “higher” science. Social functionalists Emile Durkheim (1858—1917) and Marcel Mauss (1872—1950) saw magic as immoral and antisocial, in contrast with religion, which creates social cohesiveness and solidarity within a community. These functionalists considered the magic practiced in shamanism a private act for mainly evil individual goals, and ignored the significant positive role of the shamans in contributing good will and spiritual strength to their communities.
Such views on magic and religion are generally considered as biased, reflecting a narrow Judeo-Christian perspective. Other scholars writing in the early twentieth century, such as Bronislaw Malinowski, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, and Evans Pritchard, presented a more positive side of magic. For example, Radcliffe-Brown observed that African witchcraft actually enforced socially accepted behavior and concluded that magic aimed at social control and maintenance of social values. Pritchard stressed that magic is a part of religion, as magic is involved with highly cognitive aspects of human consideration. In early studies shamanism was often equated with magic in a pejorative sense, but these twentieth-century anthropologists preferred to see almost no gap between magic and religion in social as well as cognitive (psychological) functions. R. R. Marett summarized this position and concluded that any distinction between religion and magic is an illusion due to ethnocentric projection and historical distortion (Versnel 1990, 180).
Hultkrantz saw the issue slightly differently, calling shamanism a religio-magical cultural complex: that is, magic with an ingredient of established religion, though without a priesthood. He considered shamanism as a “religious configuration (a mythico-ritual)” instead of a genuine religion (Backman and Hultkrantz 1978, 10—11). He stressed that the key word is “supernatural,” which defines any religious phenomenon, including shamanism, referring as it does to “extraordinary,” “other transcendental reality” or as Durkheim put it, “the world of the mysteries” (Hultkrantz 1983, 237). Thus Hultkrantz investigated the more religious components of shamanism, stressing the shaman’s ability to perform magic and to communicate with the supernatural world of spirits while in a state of trance or altered consciousness.
The Problem of the Definition of Shamanism
After several centuries of debate, Western anthropologists, sociologists, and religious scholars have generally agreed that shamanism is in some sense a religious phenomenon. Yet it is not at all clear exactly what kind of religious phenomenon shamanism is. Some claim that the term shamanism has been used so indiscriminately that it has lost its meaning. Certainly the use of the term raises questions. Are all magicians, or all medicine men, for example, shamans? What quality makes some religious practitioners shamans? Surely some kind of precise definition is needed as a basis in order to treat shamanism in academic discourse. On the other hand, a strong case has been made by contemporary thinkers that there is no such thing as a perfect or complete definition of the term. In fact, Versnel claims that any definition is provisional or experiential and it needs continuous readjustment and reworking (Versnel 1990, 186). From this point of view, a good definition is an open definition, without absolute or exclusive implications. The term shamanism is only a convenient label, which helps us, as Evans-Pritchard said, to “sort out facts which are different or in some respect different. If the labels do not prove helpful we can discard them” (Evans-Pritchard 1937, 11).
Nevertheless, it is natural to ask whether the origin of this particular label can shed any light on its meaning. The term shaman was used by Dutch diplomats E. Ysbrant Ides and Adam Brand, who accompanied a Russian embassy sent by Peter the Great to China during 1692—1695, as explained in the entry “History of the Study of Shamanism” in this encyclopedia. Ysbrant Ide’s published accounts of the Tungus shamans, followed by several European writers, used the word shaman. In 1875, the word shaman was included in an article for the Encyclopedia Britannica by A. H. Sayce (Grim 1983, 15). The origin of the word has been debated by philologists and ethnolinguists; the current scholarly consensus seems to be that the word is of Tungus origin, though its root meaning in that language is still debated. Some have argued that the ultimate derivation is from the Sanskrit or Pali word for a Buddhist monk, and since Buddhist monks were often considered to have magical powers, this Indian origin of the word is a possibility. Whatever the origin of the word shaman, however, it seems clear that there is no single indigenous term that covers all the various magico-religious activities that Westerners have called shamanism. A reasonable conclusion is that shamanism has been created and developed as a heuristic term in the West, which helps researchers to identify phenomena that are linked by a complicated network of similarities and common qualities.
Not all researchers accept this perspective, of course. There are at least two major trends among the researchers on shamanism. Those who define the term shamanism very broadly, as referring to many different phenomena related to ecstatic behavior, are the first category. These researchers are likely to accept shamanism as both an ancient and a universal phenomenon. For example, Ioan Lewis belongs to the first category, since he includes spirit possession, witchcraft, and cannibalism under shamanism. According to Lewis, “a shaman is an inspired prophet and healer, a charismatic religious figure, with the power to control the spirits, usually by incarnating them. If spirits speak through him, he is also likely to have the capacity to engage in mystical flight and other ’out-ofbody experiences’” (Lewis 1984, 9). Lawrence Krader saw shamanistic elements in all religions, such as the role of ecstatic charismatic leaders in Buddhism and Judaism, and in various cults and sects (Krader 1956, 282—292). Joan Halifax narrowed the definition somewhat by including in her definition of shamanism various features such as an initiatory crisis; a vision quest, an ordeal, or an experience of dismemberment and regeneration; the sacred tree or axis mundi and the spirit flight associated with it; and the role of the shaman as a healer, in addition to the ability to enter shamanic trance (Halifax 1991; Bowie 2000, 193). Geographically, Halifax included under shamanism practices in the Arctic regions, as well as Australia, Africa, Borneo, and South America and Mesoamerica.
Piers Vitebsky also belongs to the above category of the broad definer; he stressed that “shamanic motifs, themes and character appear throughout human history, religion and psychology” (Vitebsky 1995, 6). According to him, though shamanism is not a single, unified religion, it is “a cross-cultural form of religious sensibility and practice.” He has argued that shamanism is not
limited to northern Eurasia and the Americas, but can be found in Africa, New Guinea, and preChristian Europe (Vitebsky 1995, 50-51).
Other researchers prefer a more narrow and restricted definition of shamanism, and they are critical of the broad approach. They tend to confine the term to the specific cultural features and worldview characteristic of the Siberian-Arctic complex (Bowie 2000, 194). Alice Kehoe in her recent book, Shamans and Religion, took on the holders of the broad view, stating that “The time is ripe for a sensible, serious overview of anthropological uses of the term and concept ’shaman’.” She claimed that Eliade, in initiating such a loose use of the term shaman, placed shamanism within the broad range of “initiatory rites and mystical experiences of certain primitive and oriental peoples” (Eliade 1981, 116-117; Kehoe 2000, 1). She also rejected the idea of ancient contact between Siberia and Northwestern America, and argued that similarities between American Indian religious practices and Siberian practices were due to the mixing of peoples in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century brought about by the Russian fur trade (Kehoe 2000, 48). She also rejected the notion that shamans’ rituals and beliefs are remnants of a primordial Paleolithic religion. Accordingly, she warned that applying the generic word shaman is an oversimplification, arguing that “It is confusing and misleading to use a simple blanket word, lifted from an unfamiliar Asian language, for a variety of culturally recognized distinct practices and practitioners” (Kehoe 2000, 53). Thus Kehoe criticized Eli-ade’s approach from the perspective of the anthropological tradition created by Boas and others who stress the necessity of specific ethnographical data as empirical evidence for academic analysis and interpretation.
Many writers have not accepted Eliade’s definition of shamanism as “an archaic technique of ecstasy” uncritically. Some have seen it as too simplistic and restrictive; for one thing, his “ecstasy” does not include broader possessive trance and mastery of spirits, as Lewis and others pointed out. Even in an early work on Tungus shamanism, Sergei Shirokogoroff (1935) stressed that the shaman is a master of spirits and has a group of spirits varied in their interests and powers, whom the shaman controls, using a complex of special methods. According to Hultkrantz, the two most important components of shamanism are the ability of shamans to be in contact with the supernatural world and their ability to act on behalf of their communities in a way based on their extraordinary ecstatic experience, achieved with the aid of their helping spirits (Backman and Hultkrantz 1978, 11). Thus Hultkrantz treats ecstasy as just one element of the complex behavior of the shaman, extending Eliade’s definition with his emphasis on the spiritual worlds with which the shaman is deeply involved.
Joan Townsend has provided a working definition that summarizes the work of Hultkrantz and others:
A shaman is one who has direct communication with spirits, is in control of spirits and altered states of consciousness, undertakes some (magical) flights to the spirit world, and has a this-material-world focus rather than a goal of personal enlightenment. Spirits may be allowed to enter the shaman’s body and speak through him. And he can call spirits to be present at a ceremony. He/she usually remembers at least some part of a soul journey and normally is a healer. (Townsend 1997a; 2001, 1)
The definition of shamanism that guided the making of this encyclopedia, as a religious belief system in which the shaman is a specialist in the knowledge required to make a connection to the world of the spirits in order to bring about benefits for the other members of the community, is obviously a broad definition, designed to allow this work to be as inclusive as possible. Nevertheless, most of the entries were written based on ethnographical data, as Kehoe and others emphatically stress. As this encyclopedia includes not only entries based on anthropological materials but also those on historical, religious, and psychological aspects of shamanism in many different cultural contexts, it is important to have a broad definition of shamanism, as noted in the preface, to cover the wide range of cultural phenomena related to shamanism.
Psychological Perspectives and Altered States of Consciousness
Another theoretical issue in the field centers on the psychological state of shamans. It is a crucial issue, as shamans in North Asia and the Americas were often characterized as mentally deranged, neurotic, schizoid, or psychotic, largely due to their behavior during trance. This kind of stigmatizing of a shaman as a mentally sick person was created by Western researchers based on Western cultural standards of madness and sanity. The shamans in their own cultures, however, carried out their positive roles as religious specialists and healers without such negative stigma. Obviously the abnormality or normality of a shaman or indeed any person should be defined according to the standard of that person’s culture. Nevertheless, as recently as 1967 Julian Silverman, the American psychiatrist, wrote that the psychological state of the shaman is a form of acute schizophrenia characterized by “grossly non-reality oriented ideation, abnormal perceptual experiences, profound emotional upheavals and bizarre mannerisms” (Silverman 1967, 22; Krippner 2002, 965).
In order to test the alleged abnormality of shamans, Western psychologists have carried out various studies. Stanley Krippner, in his article on “Conflicting Perspectives on Shamans and Shamanism,” published in 2002, as well as in his entry in this encyclopedia, “Psychology and Shamanism,” has provided several examples of such tests. For example, the Rorschach ink-blot test was given to twelve male Apache shamans, fifty-two non-shamans, and seven self-nominated shamans (Boyer et al., 1964, 179). The results indicated that the shamans were less hysterical and healthier than the ordinary people, and no trace of neurotic or psychotic personality was found. Similarly an epidemiological survey of psychiatric disorder among Bhutanese refugees, including forty-two shamans, in Nepal, which was conducted through structured diagnostic interviews, showed that fewer general anxiety disorders were detected among the shamans (Van Ommeren et al. 2002; Krippner 2002, 966). These psychological studies showed that shamans were not mentally deficient or psychotic, but highly imaginative and talented individuals with higher than average awareness of the environment, concentration, and control of mental imagery. Along the same lines, Morris Berman has described the shaman’s ability to go into trance as an ability to achieve “heightened awareness,” a state of consciousness used in a healing modality somewhat similar to psychotherapy (Berman 2000, 30). Krippner concluded that the psychological study of shamanism could offer something to cognitive neuroscientists, social psychologists, psychological therapists, and ecological psychologists (Krippner 2002, 970).
Hamayon, Kehoe, and other anthropologists are rather critical about these psychological studies and the whole tendency to focus on altered states of consciousness as a characteristic of shamanism. The reader will find in Hamayon’s entry, “History of the Study of Shamanism,” a warning that the definition of shamanism in terms of states of consciousness is misleading, since it assumes that shamanism is a universal phenomenon that can be found everywhere and at all times, from prehistorical times to the present. Nevertheless, it can be argued that multidisciplinary approaches that include psychology can enrich the study of shamanism; in any case, as with other debates, both sides of the argument are presented in this encyclopedia.
One interesting result of the focus on altered states of consciousness has been the creation of modern mystical movements, discussed by Joan Townsend in her entry “Core Shamanism and Neo-Shamanism.” Inspired by traditional shamanism, Michael Harner and Carlos Castaneda have been two major figures in these newer Western spiritual movements. Their movements encourage individuals to have direct contact with the spiritual world, or to “journey” into alternate reality, through drumming (emphasized in Harner’s Core Shamanism) or in some cases through the use of hallucinogens (in some forms of Neo-Shamanism) in order to discover their own paths. The entries “Neo-Shamanism in Germany” and “Russian Shamanism Today” also focus on the continuing evolution of shamanic practices in a modern, urban setting.
The Organization of the Encyclopedia
A basic account of the organization of this encyclopedia is given in the Preface; more details are added here to help the reader understand the encyclopedia’s framework. According to Hultkranz,
for example, ecstatic healers and diviners of the Arctic and circumpolar regions, northern Asia, North and South America, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands are all shamans according to the criteria used by many writers (Hultkrantz 1993, 7). East Asia and Africa are relatively latecomers to studies of shamanism, but from the point of view of those, like Ioan Lewis (1971, 1984), who see possession as the core of shamanic ecstasy, it makes sense to include these areas. Australasia and Oceania are based on Andreas Lommel’s observation of shaman-like figures in Australia (1989), which seems to agree with that of the various authors of the entries in that region.
The encyclopedia is divided into two major categories, the general entries at the beginning of volume 1 and the regional entries in the rest of volume 1 and in volume 2. The general entries contain much that will have particular interest for the general reader, as well as for the specialist who is interested in a broader viewpoint of shamanism in general. For example, there are entries that explore the relationship of shamanism to the world religions Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam (in the entry “Sufism and Shamanism” and related entries), as well as entries that focus on such areas as art, costume, ecology, gender, healing, psychology, and witchcraft. Initially we hoped to include many other general topics, but in the end the actual volume of the regional entries exceeded by far that of the general entries. This is due to the fact that some general entries require a degree of generalization of religious phenomena of many different cultures, a generalization that is regarded as problematic for anthropologists, who have usually specialized in a particular culture and who, moreover, avoid broad generalizations that can lead to innacurate and misleading interpretations.
Some of the topics, such as Animal Symbolism, Dramatic Performance, Buddhism, and Tantrism, can be classified in either general or regional entries, since many of the general entries can be geographically bound and include evidence derived from at least one or two particular cultures according to the author’s expertise. Thus general and regional classifications overlap each other to some extent. These classifications were created for the convenience of users of the encyclopedia and are not to be considered as absolute categories.
The ten sections of regional entries take their names from the ten major regions of the world covered: North America; Central and South America; Europe; Eurasia; Korea and Japan; China and Sino-Asia; South Asia, the Himalayas, and Tibet; Southeast Asia; Australasia and Oceania; and Africa. The overview that introduces each regional section was written by the regional editor in charge of that section or by a representative, and it plays a crucial role in providing the reader with a larger context for the individual entries. The overview introduces the region, starting with a brief account of its geography, history, and general cultural characteristics, followed by the general characteristics of shamanism in the region. A very brief introduction to each entry is also included. Here again, no attempt has been made to impose one approach to the study of shamanism on the scholars who have written the overviews; rather the overviews reflect the rich diversity of the field, embodying the distinctive points of view and disciplinary approaches of their authors.
The reason for choosing to place some of the entries in the sections in which they are found needs some explanation. For example, the Atayul people in Taiwan are geographically in the area covered under the title “China and Sino-Asia,” but the entry has been placed in the “Australasia and Oceania” section, since the Atayul are an Australasian people. The guiding principle is that peoples of the same ethnic group are, as much as possible, placed in the same section, in order to highlight the common features these peoples share, even when they have become widely separated, due to migration and other reasons. Thus readers are advised to use both the index and the crossreferences, as well as the table of contents, to locate the various indigenous peoples who are covered. A few words on each section here may also be helpful in orienting the reader.
The entries in the regional section “North America” represent only a small selection from the thousands of cultures that existed before the arrival of Europeans, but these entries provide indepth accounts of major North American and Circumpolar Arctic groups. Michael Winkelman, in his overview, has presented the story of the migration of these peoples from North Asia and the changes in their shamanistic practices over the centuries, both before and after contact with Western Europeans. As he notes, North American shamanistic practitioners interact with the spirit
world and induce trance through the use of drumming or chanting. Another scholar in the field, Jordan Paper, has made the point that shamanism in North America (south of the Inuit) tended to be more “democratized” than that of North Eurasian shamanism. He noted that the Siberian shaman in North Asia was a specialist with specific societal roles, whereas the spirit world and the trance experience were available to all members of the community in the Americas before EuroAmerican cultural domination. Through trance and visionary experience, a personal relationship with these spirits was vital for the benefit of individuals and the community (Paper 1990, 90).
The entries in the “Central and South America” section also cover vast cultural regions, where “the most ancient, enduring and spectacular examples of shamanistic practices [are] documented,” as Glenn Shepard explains in the overview. He believes Central and South American shamanism developed independently from the Arctic practices in response to heterogeneous ecological, sociocultural, and historical conditions.
The section on European shamanism highlights shamanistic interpretation of the ancient, medieval, and modern religious phenomena called variously paganism, witchcraft, mysticism, magic, and Neo-Shamanism. The sources used include myths, folklore, and fairy tales. These entries present the shamanistic practices of Celtic, English, Roman, Germanic, Finno-Ugric, Russian, and other European peoples. Carl Ruck’s overview makes the case that European pagan practices have never completely died out, and the entries themselves contain suggestions of an interesting continuity between the ancient practices among such peoples as the Celts and Romans and the practices of the modern spiritual movements of Neo-Shamanism.
Still, the number of entries in the European section is relatively small, whereas “Eurasia” includes the largest number of entries: Eurasia, as the center of Siberian and Arctic shamanism, seen by many as the most authentic form of shamanism, has been historically the most well-studied region. In most Eurasian societies, traditional forms of shamanism have disappeared, but shamanistic beliefs and rituals survived in many cultural systems, specifically in the idea of spirits, certain rituals, and the worldviews of the people. The entries, some contributed by indigenous scholars, are based on firsthand field experience of their own cultures.
East Asian entries are divided into two sections: Chinese cultural domains (“China and Sino-Asia”) and the Altaic speakers’ region (“Korea and Japan”). China has many different minority groups. The Turko-Mongol peoples and Manchus in the north are included in “Eurasia,” due to their ethnic and cultural affinity with the Eurasian peoples; the Yi and Miao, in the south; the Tibetans in the southwest are discussed in an entry in the “South Asia, the Himalayas, and Tibet” section. The shamanistic practices of Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Chinese population of Taiwan are also included.
Korea has perhaps its own pivotal tradition of shamanism in East Asia, one which is very different from Chinese shamanistic practices. For one thing, Chinese shamanism includes a much broader range of practices, due to ethnic and cultural variations in China. Japanese shamanism is seen as closer to Korean than to Chinese shamanism, due to possible ancient linguistic and cultural ties with the Altaic peoples originating in Eurasia, although present forms of Korean shamanism seem to be more performance-oriented than Japanese forms.
The region covered in the section “South Asia, the Himalayas, and Tibet” includes both Hindu and Buddhist countries, all considered more or less under the Indian cultural domain. The Tibetans and related peoples in Nepal have clearer forms of shamanism than the forms found in India, where the practice of spirit possession, divination, healing, and exorcism are the main features of shamanistic practice. In India, spirit possession can be practiced by any individual inclined to such capacity, not just religious specialists.
Southeast Asia, which also provides a variety of shamanistic beliefs and practices, is one of the core areas of Old World shamanism, according to Robert Winzeler’s entry, “Southeast Asian Shamanism” (which supplements the overview with which he introduces the section). A belief in spirits seems to be the common denominator of shamanism in Southeast Asia, but the various forms of shamanism in this region are not necessarily related. Migrations of Southeast Asian peoples by land and sea further complicate the religious map of the region.
Possibly originating from Southeast Asia, the shamanistic practices of Australasian and Oceanic peoples in Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia are also included in this encyclopedia. Shamans in this region are called various names such as healers, priests, and diviners, like shamans of many other regions. There are strong shamanistic elements in the practices of these peoples, such as the importance of trance and dream, although some writers in this field are reluctant to call them “shamans.”
Africa has a rich variety of indigenous religious traditions, many stemming from ancient times. Edith Turner’s overview points out that the narrowness of Eliade’s definition of shamanism has done a disservice to the study of African religious practices. She adopts broader definitions of shamanism, which include African spirit possession in healing and divination. The study of shamanism in Africa has grown enormously, and the opportunities for fieldwork among peoples whose practices still have many shamanistic elements have made valuable work possible. The entries of the Africa section reflect such new perspectives on shamanism in Africa.
The inclusion of the perspectives of almost two hundred contributors writing about such a wide range of cultures will allow the reader to consider the controversial issues already discussed, as well as other fascinating questions in the field, questions such as, What kind of society or culture tends to support shamanic or shamanistic beliefs and rituals? Under what circumstances do people tend to turn to shamans as their helpers and healers? Scholars such as Jane Atkinson have pointed out that shamanism never occurs in isolation, but is always embedded in wider systems of thought and practice (Atkinson 1992, 315). Our hope is that this encyclopedia will provide the foundations of a study not only of shamanism itself but also of the wider societal and cultural basis of which each form of shamanism is a part.
Mariko Namba Walter
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ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ENTRIES
!Kung Healing, Ritual, and Possession, 891
African Traditional Medicine, 895
Afro-Brazilian Shamanism, 371
Ainu Shamanism (Japan), 657
Amazon Funeral Rites and Shamanism
(Brazil), 375
American Indian Medicine Societies, 281
Ancestor Worship in Africa, 899
Ancient Egyptian Shamanism, 906
Ancient Iranian Religions and Shamanism, 529
Ancient North Asian Shamanism, 532
Ancient South Indian Shamanism, 745
Animal Symbolism (Africa), 3
Animal Symbolism (Americas), 7
Animal Symbolism (Asia), 11
Archaeology of Shamanism, 16
Art and Shamanism, 21
Asante Shamanism (Ghana), 910
Atayal Shamanism (Taiwan), 857
Australian Aboriginal Shamanism, 860
Ayahuasca Ritual Use, 378
Bioenergetic Healing, 29
“Black” Shamans, “White” Shamans, 536
Buddhism and Shamanism, 30
Burmese Spirit Lords and Their Mediums, 803
Buryat Shamanism (Mongolia), 539
Cape Nguni Shamanism (South Africa), 914
“Celtic Shamanism”: Pagan Celtic Spirituality, 469
Central and South American Shamanism, 382
Cheju-do Island Shamanism (Korea), 666
Chepang Shamanism (Nepal), 747
Chinese Shamanism, Classical, 709
Chinese Shamanism, Contemporary, 713
Choctaw Shamanism, 285
Christianity and Shamanism, 35
Classical World Shamanism (Ancient Greece
and Rome), 478
Colonialism and Shamanism, 41
Core Shamanism and Neo-Shamanism, 49
Costume, Shaman, 57
Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Shamans, 61
Curanderismo (the Americas), 393
Daoism and Shamanism, 71
Dark Shamanism (Amazonia), 396
Darkhad Shamanism (Mongolia), 545
Deer Imagery and Shamanism (Siberia), 547
Demonic Possession and Exorcism, 74
Divination, 78
Dramatic Performance in Shamanism, 82
Dreams and Shamanism (Papua New Guinea),
865
Dreams and Visions, 89
Drumming in Shamanistic Rituals, 95
Drums, Shamanic: Form and Structure, 101
Ecology and Shamanism, 107
Entheogens (Psychedelic Drugs) and
Shamanism, 111
Entoptic Images, 117
Ethnocentrism and Shamanism, 119
Evenki Shamanism (Siberia and Manchuria),
551
Extraction, 124
Fairies and Shamanism, 484
Finno-Ugric Shamanism, 486
Fire and Hearth, 127
Funeral Rites in Eurasian Shamanism, 557
Gender in Shamanism, 131
Ghost Dance and Prophet Dance, 287
Great Basin Hunters and Gatherers, 292
Greenland Shamanism, 297
Hausa Shamanistic Practices (Nigeria and
Niger), 920
Healing and Shamanism, 137
Hinduism and Ecstatic Indian Religions, 750
History of the Study of Shamanism, 142
Hmong Shamanism (Thailand, Laos), 806
Hopi Shamanism, 303
Horses, 147
Huichol (Wixarika) Shamanism (Mexico), 399
Hypnosis and Shamanism, 149
Igbo Shamanism (Nigeria), 925
Indonesian Shamanism, 810
Initiation, 153
Inuit Shamanism (Central Arctic), 307
Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Shamanism and
Secret Societies, 312
Japanese Shamanic Music, 670
Japanese Shamanism, 674
Javanese Shamanism (Indonesia), 815
Kalmyk Shamanic Healing Practices, 564
Kanaima Shamanism (Amazonia), 406
Kazak Shamanism, 569
Khakass Shamanism, 573
Kirghiz Shamanism (West Central Asia), 579
Korean Shamanism, 681
Ladakhi Shamans and Oracles (Himalayas), 756
Lakota Shamanism, 315
Latin American Christianity and Shamanism, 409
Latin American Literature and Shamanism, 414
“Magic,” Power, and Ritual in Shamanism, 161
Malay Shamans and Healers, 818
Mami Wata Religion (West Africa), 928
Manchu Shamanism, 582
Manipur Meitei Shamanism (Northeast
India), 763
Maori Religion, 869
Mapuche Shamanism, 417
Marabouts and Magic (West Africa), 930
Maya Bone Divination, 425
Maya Cosmology, 426
Mayan Shamanism, 431
Messianism and Shamanism, 169
Mongolian Shamanic Texts, 586
Mongolian Shamanic Tradition and
Literature, 593
Mountain Priests—Shugendo (Japan), 689
Murut Shamanism (Borneo), 824
Museum Collections, 174
Music in World Shamanism, 179
Navajo Shamanism, 318
Ndembu Shamanism (Zambia), 934
Neo-Shamanism in Germany, 496
Nepalese Shamans, 766
Neuropsychology of Shamanism, 187
New Orleans Voudou (North America), 323
Nong Shamanism (South China), 722
Nordic Shamanism, 500
North American Oral Traditions and
Shamanism, 331
Oceania: Rituals and Practitioners, 874
Offerings and Sacrifice in Shamanism, 197
Ojibwa Shamanism, 334
Okinawan Shamans and Priestesses, 693
Oroqen Shamanism (Northeast China), 597
Otomi (Nahnu) Indian Shamanism (Mexico),
435
Paganism in Europe, 504
Peruvian Shamans, 439
Peyote Ritual Use (Central America and
North America), 336
Pilgrimage and Shamanism, 201
Piman Oral Literature and Shamanism, 339
Priestesses (Mediums) of Sri Lanka, 773
Priestesses of Eurasia, 601
Psychology of Shamanism, 204
Psychopathology and Shamanism, 211
Psychopomp, 217
Pueblo Religion and Spirit Worlds, 346
Puyuma Shamanism (Taiwan), 880
Qiang Ritual Practices, 725
Quiche and Zuni Divination (Guatemala
and New Mexico), 446
Rai Shamanism (Nepal), 775
Rock Art and Shamanism, 219
Russian Folklore and Shamanism, 509
Russian Shamanism Today, 513
Sakha (Yakut) Shamanism (Northeast Asia), 608
Santerfa (Afro-Cuban Tradition), 449
Semai Shamanism (Borneo), 827
Shadow Puppetry and Shamanism (Java), 832
Sibe Shamanism (Manchuria), 615
Siberian Shamanism, 618
Soul Retrieval, 225
South Asian Shamanism, 778
Southeast Asian Shamanism, 834
Spirit Mediumship (Singapore), 732
Spirit Possession, 228
Spirit Possession in Rajasthan (India), 784
Spirit Writing in Hong Kong, 729
Spirits and Ghosts in Mongolia, 627
Spirits and Souls, 235
Sufism and Shamanism, 238
Swahili Healers and Spirit Cult (East Africa), 938
Taiwanese Shamanic Performance and
Dance, 736
Tajik Shamanism (Central Asia), 629
Taman Shamanism (Borneo), 842
Tantrism and Shamanism, 243
Tarahumara Shamanism (Mexico), 453
Teleutian Shamanism (Siberia), 632
Thai Spirit World and Spirit Mediums, 847
Tibetan Shamanism, 790
Toba Shamanism (Argentina), 461
Trance Dance, 247
Trance, Shamanic, 250
Transformation, 255
Transvestism in Shamanism, 259
Trees, 263
Tsugaru Shamanism (Japan), 700
Tuvan Shamanism, 637
Twin Cult of the Akan (Ghana), 942
Urban Shamanism, 265
Uyghur Healers (China), 642
Uzbek Shamanism, 646
Visions and Imagery: Western Perspectives,
267
Witchcraft and Sorcery in Shamanism, 271
Witchcraft in Africa, 946
Witchcraft in Russia, 516
Witchcraft in the Modern West, 519
Yaka Shamanistic Divination (Southwestern
Congo), 951
Yellow Shamans (Mongolia), 649
Yokuts Shamanism (California), 350
Yuman Shamanism (Northern Baja
California), 354
Yupik and Inupiaq Masks (Alaska), 358
Yupik Shamanism (Alaska), 362
Zarma Spirit Mediums (Niger), 954
Zulu Shamanism (South Africa), 957
GENERAL THEMES IN WORLD SHAMANISM
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ANIMAL SYMBOLISM (AFRICA)
Across Africa, one of the primary duties of traditional healers is the manipulation of symbolic paraphernalia, especially in ritual contexts. Many of the important symbols in ritual life relate to animals, yet any attempt to systematize animal symbolism as it relates to indigenous beliefs in the whole of Africa cannot but be general. Indeed, Africa embodies greatly diverse cultural traditions on both the regional and the local level. What follows focuses on the various means ritual specialists use to manipulate animal symbols. It draws on a number of African cultures, in the expectation that such particular remarks will elicit more general themes prevalent in shamanistic practice throughout Africa.
Animal Symbolism and Cultural Values
Animal symbolism plays a huge role in social life in Africa: Animals and their behaviors frequently represent the unwritten rules of a society. It is ritual specialists and mediums who bring these rules to light and reiterate their importance to the community. Thus, animal symbolism, through the mediation of ritual specialists, serves as a means to instill values within the varied cultural contexts in which it is used. This can be seen in several ways: most notably perhaps in terms of aspects of social organization, cosmology, and personal power.
Social Organization
Many African societies view the animal kingdom as a reflection of their own human society. Indeed, such considerations are made particularly explicit in ritual life when symbols are manipulated and used to facilitate entering into various states of ecstatic trance or spirit mediumship. The organization of the animal king
dom is often considered as mirroring the hierarchical structure of many African societies. Thus, in most of West Africa, at the acme of the hierarchy is the lion. One of the greatest compliments is to be compared to a lion; indeed, in a great number of rituals the lion is an especially popular symbol of strength and power. In many senses, lions are seen to have taught human beings how to live, hunt, and behave nobly. Thus animals and their actions bespeak values inherent in humans, so that symbols fuse perceptions of the animal kingdom and actual social life. In relationship to human society, mediums’ interactions with animals suggest a didactic relationship: Animals teach and instill knowledge that, often transmitted through the religious specialist, is related back to the community and elucidates appropriate modes of conduct.
Cosmology
Animals relate to spirits or supernatural worlds as well. Sometimes animals are held to have direct recourse to the spiritual pantheon, especially when they symbolize lineage or represent ancestral sprits. In a great variety of cases, animals are thought to embody human spirits; this holds for actual living animals, as well as for the spirits of animals. In either case, whether through interpreting their movements or acting as a spirit medium, the medium interacts with human spirits in animal form. Alternatively, various responsibilities are attributed to animal spirits, and it is the job of the medium to know, if not to manipulate, these influences. Animals, then, consistently symbolize recurrent themes inherent in social and psychological life. Accordingly, the use of animal symbols, both in shamanistic ritual and ordinary life, is a conspicuous element of social life in Africa.
Personal Power
Most importantly, the religious specialists are charged with placating the malevolent forces that are often believed to be harming the community. In so doing, they engage with various sorts of animal symbols, the meanings of which are culturally specific and sometimes far from obvious. Indeed, notable differences between animal symbolism and human qualities can be drawn. For example, small and weak creatures commonly symbolize positive qualities such as survival and determination rather than negative ones such as vulnerability and feebleness. Despite the fact that animals such as hares are prey in the wild, easily and commonly slain by larger more powerful animals, in the social world they represent decidedly favorable characteristics. So, inasmuch as symbols of power speak to recurrent themes in African social life, symbols of resilience and persistence suggest that the sometimes difficult quest for survival is held to be valuable.
Healing
The most widespread occurrences of animal symbolism in shamanistic practice in Africa have to do with healing. Indeed, myriad cultures incorporate animals into healing rituals. The Lebu healers, known especially for their expertise in the Ndeup ceremony, are called ndeupkaat in the Lebu version of the Wolof language. In rituals among the Lebu of Senegal, shaman-healers dress as hyenas and are confronted and scared off by the more powerful and noble lion. The hyena represents immorality and human weakness. The hyena is thus seen as symbolizing all that is negative about humans, which perhaps explains why it is so frequently referred to in modern West African culture (see Mambety 1992). Lebu shamanhealers generally contribute to strengthening community morality by demanding that women take part in the Ndeup ceremony, which serves to ward off evil spirits from the community, as well as satisfying the needs of other spirits who demand sacrifices.
In order to identify the evil spirits who may have contaminated a human body, causing depression, Lebu ritual specialists tie up the sick person next to a tied goat or bull (such animals are common in ritual sacrifice throughout Africa and are used similarly by the Bamileke in
Cameroon). The shaman-healer then anoints the ill person with the blood of chickens and the horns of a bull, seeking the name of the contaminating spirit. Women are then ordered to chant as the shaman-healer consults these spirits. Their rhythmic chants, in fact, enable the shaman-healer to enter into the ecstatic state necessary to communicate with the spirits causing the illness. Eventually the ill person feels reborn and is ordered to jump over the animal seven times. Then he sits on the animal’s side and whispers all his desires into the creature’s ear before it is sacrificed. From here, many people accompany the ill person to a specific location, where many of them fall into trances induced and supervised by the shamanhealer. Afterwards, the ill person is declared healed, his troubles having been transferred to the animal before it was sacrificed. Thus through ritual, the shaman-healer instills morality back into a member of the community and reasserts his authority as guide.
The importance of lion symbols in Lebu ritual practices reflects the recurrence of this creature as a symbol of power throughout West Africa. Another example from Ghana underscores the importance of the lion to voodoo healers. Lions, in addition to hyenas and hares, serve as central symbols in rituals of curing. In order to reach spirit worlds in the relatively recent Dhani voodoo form, these healers use actual parts of a lion’s body as ingredients in concoctions present during these rituals. The lion is equally important in East Africa as well. Amongst the East African Nuer peoples, a healer is seen to be an expert in the “science” of the lion, which underlines the importance of the creature as a link between seer and spirits in shamanistic ceremony. By contrast, in other parts of East Africa, the lion symbolizes laziness, and hence is a negative, if not insulting, symbol. As such, it is either not used in ritual, or used in a negative way.
Trance, Dream-States, and Spirit Mediumship
Many African tribal traditions show that humans are mistaken in believing they are separate and different from the animals. For example, animals gave the gift of enlightenment to humankind, and this gift is given again through shamanistic dreams and altered states
of consciousness. Normally, shamanic ecstatic trance or dream-states, in which animals often appear to the seer as humans, make it clear that humankind’s acquisition of hunting knowledge represents an endowment of gifts and wisdom from predators to humankind. The relationships and sets of interaction between healers and animals can be broken down into four distinct types: tutelage, personification, communication, and protection.
Tutelage
The idea of an intimate relationship of tutelage between humans and animals has continued over time. Such motifs have sometimes, for example, been grafted onto the story of Njajaan Njaay, the hero of the Wolof people and founder of the thirteenth-century Waalo kingdom. Njaay was reputed to be a diplomat and fair dispenser of justice, who could unite peoples behind him as if by magic. Although stories of his miraculous return after many lost years abound, some stories (see Diouf 2001) now portray him as having been brought up by lions and then returning part-man/part-lion to unite the people of the Waalo kingdom, due to the wisdom and powers acquired from his experience with lions.
Moreover, healers often state that it is thanks to the various sorts of tutelage that animal spirits offer them that they are able to ply their trade. In some instances, this tutelage comes to nonreligious specialists, and it is in this way that they are started on the path to becoming healers endowed with special abilities and powers. This is one way among many others that such healers are selected in varied cultures across Africa.
Personification
Spirit mediums commonly assume animal personae in rituals. In so doing, they reaffirm the importance of animals in daily life and, by extension, the efficacy of animal symbolism in ritual. For instance, in shamanistic practices among Senufo societies in Cote d’Ivoire and Mali, the practitioners use bull, ram, or antelope horns to symbolize masculinity in the masks they create for their rituals. Using such paraphernalia, the healer strives to be able to relate to such animal spirits and in so doing to
placate the malevolent forces inherent in them and stress their benevolent qualities.
Communication
In southern Africa, one of the central functions of !Kung shamanic trance is to communicate with or act as a spirit medium for animal spirits, because animals are seen as messengers between worlds. In order to communicate with them and coax them into certain locations so that they may be more easily hunted, mediums are reputed to leave their own bodies and enter those of the animals, at which point they can communicate with and persuade them. Alternatively, when animal spirits represent malevolent forces, !Kung shaman-healers may serve as spirit mediums for the animals’ spirits in order to allow the animals to communicate to the community as a whole.
Among the !Kung, music is a central means of bringing about trance. Songs tend to be of two sorts. They either tell about animals and their relation to social or spiritual life, or they mimic the sounds of animals, using either voice or instrument (or both). In either case, the relationship between animals and trance should be clear: Songs, an essential means for entering an ecstatic state, focus on animals, and the trance itself allows communication with animal spirits. The !Kung, as a historical hunter-gather nomadic group, place an extreme emphasis on community relations with animals, and this is indeed made manifest through ritual and in particular through the conduct of the !Kung shaman-healer.
Protection
On the other hand, and unlike !Kung society, in which trance permits animals’ spirits to enter humans and vice versa, in parts of West Africa some animals are seen as containing the spirits of angry humans. Such animals often come to haunt people who have unjustly preyed upon fellow humans or creatures. Shaman-healers are believed to have the abilities needed to cure individuals of the illnesses brought about by unwanted spirit possession, and even more importantly, to protect the whole community. The shaman-healer’s role as protector is made clear in a Lebu myth that tells how a man, wronged and killed by his friend after the friend had
murdered the man’s powerful father, returned in the form of a shark, which also carried the spirit of his father, and haunted the murderer, eventually killing him (see Ngom 1982; Wade 2002). Although the murderer had mended his ways and assumed the power of the lion in a shamanistic ritual, such a transformation did not kill his guilty conscience, which the shark may be taken to symbolize. This myth and the shamanistic uses of animal symbolism depicted in it give evidence of perception of the sometimes negative influence of animal spirits in daily life. The shaman-healer is responsible for preventing these negative influences from coming to fruition.
Some Changes
Ritual ceremonies and animal symbolism in Africa is changing. Whereas lion symbolism once formed the basis of many forms of African culture, and ritual sacrifices of bulls and goats lay solely within the domain of shamanistic practice, the lion has more recently emerged as a symbol for specific nations rather than for the whole of mankind, and the sacrifice of bulls and goats has been incorporated into Islamic rituals.
Although the types of rituals supervised by mediums and the types of animal symbols they use are shifting, the need for religious specialists to interact with the spirit world and their ability to do so remain omnipresent. Among the !Kung, for instance, new trance dances have appeared within the last decade, and with them come new roles for animal spirits and new ways in which to ritually engage them. Yet shamanistic practice is controversial, especially due to the ubiquitous influence of scriptural religions in so many parts of Africa. Moreover, in many parts of the continent shamanistic practices are hotly contested as outdated and out of step with the modern world.
In turn, the manipulation of animal symbols is no longer exclusively the property of shaman-healers and ritual specialists. On the contrary, new generations of Africans are attentive to means whereby they can combine old symbols with new representations. Indeed, the increase in outlets of expression such as films and texts has meant new ways of showing the importance of animal symbolism in most of social life. In addition, the meaning of symbols is changing significantly. Even though most of
these animals have maintained their symbolic roles over centuries, it is to be expected that some creatures may change their roles and that new animal symbols will continue to emerge.
Chris Hogarth
Noah Butler
See also: !Kung Healing, African Traditional Medicine; Ancestor Worship in Africa; Cape Nguni Shamanism; Entoptic Images;
Initiation; Ritual, and Possession; Rock Art and Shamanism
References and further reading:
Angrand, Armand-Pierre. 1943. Manuel Fran^ais-Oulof. Dakar: F. Nathan.
Ba, Saidou Moussa. 1990. La promessa di Hamadi [The promise of Hamadi]. Novara: De Agostini.
Blakely, Thomas, Walter Van Beek, and Dennis Thomson, eds. 1994. Religion in Africa.
London: Heinemann.
Boilat, Abbe P.-D. 1853. Esquisses Senegalaises. Paris: P. Bertrand.
Diop, Birago. 1953. Les contes d’Amadou Koumba. Paris: Presence Africaine.
———. 1958. Les nouveaux contes d’Amadou Koumba. Paris: Presence Africaine.
———. 1963. Contes et lavanes. Paris: Presence Africaine.
Diouf, Mamadou. 2001. Histoire du Senegal. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose.
Gamble, David. 1980. Wolof Stories from Senegambia. San Francisco: San Francisco State University.
Hadithi, Mwenye. 1990. Lazy Lion. Boston: Little, Brown.
Heale, Jaye. 1995. True African Animal Tales. Cape Town: Struik.
Hermine, Mafieuh Meido. 1992. Entre l’angoisse et l’arbre de paix [Between agony and the tree of peace]. Geneva: Editions Helios.
King, Bridget. 1995. The Magic Drum: Stories from Africa’s Savannah, Sea, and Skies.
Nairobi: Jacaranda Designs.
Labat, Jean-Baptiste. 1728. Nouvelle relation de l’Afrique Occidentale [New narrative of Western Africa]. Paris: Chez G. Cavelier.
Mambety, Djibril Diop. 1973. Tuuki Buki. Gennevilliers: Laboratoires CTM.
-------. 1992. Hyenes [Hyenas]. Paris: Mediatheque des trois mondes.
Ndao, Cheikh Aliou. 1994. Mbaam Dictateur. Paris: Presence Africaine.
Ngom, Mbissane. 1982. Le Prix du pardon. Paris: EDICEF.
Philippart de Foy, Guy. 1976. Waki, le petit pygmee et les animaux de la foret. Paris: F. Nathan.
Roger, Baron. 1829. Recherches philosophiques sur la langue oulofe. Paris: Moreau.
Senghor, Leopold Sedar, and Sadji Abdoulaye.
1953. La belle histoire de Leuk-le-Lievre. Paris: Hachette.
Soce Diop, Ousmane. 1962. Contes et legendes d’Afrique Noire. Paris: Presence Africaine.
Surgy, Albert de. 1994. Nature et fonction des fetiches en Afrique Noire [Nature and functions of fetishes in Black Africa]. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Wade, Mansour Sora. 1995. Fary l’Anesse [Fary the she-ass]. San Francisco: California Newsreel.
———. 2002. Le prix du pardon [The price of pardon]. San Francisco: California Newsreel.
Apsaroke shaman Crow wearing eagle headdress. 1908. (Library of Congress)
ANIMAL SYMBOLISM (AMERICAS)
For the indigenous peoples of the Americas, the symbolism associated with animals helps form and configure indispensable links between human, natural, and spiritual realms. Expressive of these vital relationships, animals are often referred to and categorized as Animal People, or some variation on that theme. Although there are of course regional and tribal variations, in general the resulting mediations help communicate the knowledge and teachings, as well as the transformative potency, to successfully orchestrate a rite of passage, a healing ceremony, a hunting ritual, or the renewal of the world itself. Partnership with the Animal People was established in the creation time, and is revealed and celebrated through the telling of the oral traditions. A particular partnership may also be personally acquired through a visionary experience, or perhaps inherited, and expressed in the images used to adorn a costume, heard in the words of a song, and observed in the movements of a dancer as he is transfigured into an eagle, jaguar, or wolf. And it is a partnership that allows a shaman to journey as easily to the creation time as to the bottom of the sea, transcending temporal and spatial dimensions. An appreciation of the relational roles and mean
ings of the Animal People, richly embedded in narrative and ritual symbolism, is thus an essential component of an understanding of the structures and dynamics of American Indian shamanism. Some of the traditions that nurtured the links between humans and the Animal People are still alive, others are not; but for the sake of simplicity, all will be described in the present tense in what follows, except where clearly linked to a world that no longer exists.
The significance and relationship animals have with humans were set forth during the primordial time of creation, as witnessed in the actions and deeds of such mythic animal beings as Coyote, Salmon, Raven, or Spider, and as discovered and celebrated in the retelling of the oral traditions. The mythic Animal People are beings with volition, thought, and speech, exhibiting human desires and frailties, often with animal names and characteristics, and typically with great transformative powers. In the beginning they confronted and destroyed monsters of all sorts, and prepared the world for the coming of humans.
In one Crow Indian oral tradition (of the North American northern Great Plains), it was
Isaahkawuattee, Old Man Coyote, with the help of four ducks, who brought dry land to a watery world. Then with his younger brother, Little Fox, Old Man Coyote traveled the land, transforming it into mountains and valleys, creating the game animals and fish, and finally humans themselves. Old Man Coyote subsequently established the kinship rules, hunting practices, and religious ceremonies necessary for humans to prosper. Although a culture hero and benefactor for humans, Coyote was also endowed with self-serving, trickster qualities. As Coyote was given his particular disposition, so too were the other animals. In the instance of the Nez Perce (of the North American Plateau area), it was Hanwayaat, the Creator, who named all the animals and gave them their specific abilities. These “assigned” qualities helped determine the unique character of each animal species, whether exhibited in their behavior as game animals or in their potency and prerogatives as guardian spirits.
In preparing the world for humans, the Animal People also brought forth the essential teachings that further patterned the nature of animal-human relations. Continually emphasized in the oral traditions of the Plateau peoples of North America is the importance of not hunting too many animals, of sharing all that is acquired, and of not boasting of one’s success in the hunt. In a creation story told by the Desana of the Colombian Amazon, humans arrived on earth in a great Snake-Canoe, the anaconda, who also acts as a watchdog for Vai-mahse, the Master of all the Animals. The success of the hunter as well as the paye (shaman) depends on their ability to enter into certain symbolic sexual relations with Vai-mahse. The intimate association between human and animal was further strengthened by the nature of the first couple, which consisted of a human Desana and an aracu fish. All later Desana would trace their ancestral kinship to this union, and a significant part of their diet consists of this important fish.
Shamanic success, be it in healing the sick, hunting an animal, or renewal of the world, can depend on the ability of shamans to travel the landscape of the primordial era and renew their kinship with the Animal People, dissolving temporal and spatial boundaries. It is an act accomplished only after carefully listening to and interpreting the teachings, symbolically represented in the oral traditions and in the
shaman’s own visionary experiences. As an Iglu-lik angdkut (of the Canadian Arctic) applies with great skill the “magic words,” utterances once spoken by the animals and handed down from the beginning of time, shamans throughout the Americas learn and use the esoteric languages of the Animal People. Adept at singing their own medicine songs, shamans must be just as much at ease deciphering the rich symbolism of dreams, visions, and oral traditions, all of which have emanated from the voices of the Animal People.
In various rites of passage, especially those associated with vision questing and shamanic initiation, the importance of establishing kinship with the Animal People is particularly paramount. During an initiatory vision, it would likely be an animal spirit, either in animal or human form, that communicates with the seeker. Serving as a guide, the animal spirit would escort the neophyte in a journey of spiritual discovery into the landscape of the primordial time. Such a journey is rich in imagery, and it may only be a shaman, wise in years, who can interpret the significance of the dream gift. Among the Plains and Plateau peoples of North America the eagle or hawk could symbolize flight, while the salmon or buffalo could refer to sustenance, or bounty.
The culmination of the Desana shaman’s initiation occurs when the novice takes viho snuff. If the viho accepts the novice, the novice is turned into an animal shape, perhaps into the ye’e, “jaguar,” and roams the forest indistinguishable from its other inhabitants. For the Desana another term for paye (shaman) is ye’e. As an intermediary between society and nature, the paye is able to change himself into the jaguar and travel the spiritual terrain of the forests. The jaguar is to nature as the paye is to humans; each must be a great hunter if survival is to be assured. Following initiation, the paye (who is always male) can turn into the jaguar at will. The association is so complete that the paye speaks with the voice and sees with the eyes of the jaguar; he devours raw meat and sleeps on the ground. Created by the Sun Creator to be his main intermediary on earth, the jaguar has great powers of fertility, is associated with fire, and is heard by its roar, the thunder. So powerful, the ye’e is the only animal not under the control of the Vai-mahse, the Master of the Animals.
Having demonstrated their tremendous transformative powers in the preparation of the world for humans, the Animal People can be viewed as archetypal of the original shamans. As the shaman is able to identify and establish a personal kinship bond with a particular Animal Being, perhaps replicating its character, the transformative potency of the Animal People is brought to bear for the shaman to affect the lives of others. Among the Crow, an akbaaUa, “one who doctors,” has an adoptive relationship with his “medicine father,” perhaps an elk, eagle, or buffalo, acquired during a vision quest. In addition, the personality qualities of the akbaalia himself often parallel the primary transformer in Crow tradition, Coyote. Although typically self-effacing, a benefactor and a healer of the sick, the akbaalia can just as easily assume the role of a trickster, deceptive and self-serving, especially in the face of a rival. Among the Coeur d’Alene (of the North American Plateau), an individual’s suumesh (spiritual power) is expressed in the song acquired in a vision from a guardian spirit and renewed each winter in the Jump Dance. During the dance, when an individual properly sings his suumesh song, he becomes his animal spirit, speaking its voice and dancing its mannerisms, perhaps that of a wolf or an elk. If the song is not properly sung, ill fortune and spirit sickness will likely ensue. If the song is properly sung by, for example, a salmon shaman, then the spirit of the salmon will provide the insights and power for the salmon shaman to successfully coordinate salmon fishing.
The nature of a shaman’s particular spiritual power is often framed in how his animal guardian spirit is categorized within the larger worldview of his society. In many hunting-oriented societies, for example, a hunter will seek out a predatory animal as his spirit guide. For the Iglulik, the fox, owl, bear, and shark, all great hunters themselves, are considered among the most powerful helping spirits for a human hunter. As noted, hunting success for the Desana paye revolves around an intimate relationship with the animal hunter par excellence, the jaguar. Among the Crow, there is a close association between what are considered the natural attributes of an animal and the particular spiritual powers of a baaxpee (medicine). As the squirrel spends its time gathering and storing nuts and berries for the coming winter, possessing squir
rel medicine helps assure food for one’s family. As the eagle’s keen sight and physical prowess are unsurpassed, eagle baaxpee is highly sought. This categorical relationship is not unlike that expressed in the use of an “Indian name.” Often ritually bestowed on a child by an elder, the name itself would refer to a particular animal and perhaps some special action of that animal—Swift Hawk or Hidden Badger. If cared for properly, the animal name would help protect the child and nurture in the child abilities of the kind expressed in the name.
With newly acquired kinship with the Animal People, the initiated shaman is ready to apply the transformative powers of the primordial realm to the welfare of the human realm. As shamanic societies are often dependent on game animals, birds, and fish for subsistence, one primary focus of ritual effort is in the perpetuation of animal species. These efforts might take the form of individual hunting rituals, specific to a hunter and his game, as well as more communal ceremonials, seeking renewal in the vitality of the entire animal world.
The game animals are themselves often characterized as possessing humanlike qualities and referred to as kinsmen. For the Desana, the deer is the most human animal of the forests, able to laugh and dance, with its own language, and prone to suffer from illnesses. As a principal game animal, the deer represents the female principle and symbolizes cleanliness. Similarly the deer for the Coeur d’Alene is Amotqn’s, the Creator’s, favorite pet. It knows the thoughts of the hunters, and enjoys playing games of hide and seek with them. As with the buffalo on the Plains and salmon in the Plateau of North America, the deer is often addressed as a “brother.” With its intelligence and close physical resemblance to humans, the bear for the Naskapi of the interior Labrador of North America is one of the most powerful of all animals, having influence over the other animals and knowing the inner desires of hunters. Tremendous ritual observances are thus paid to the bear, from communicating with it through dreams, to showing care in how it is consumed and its bones are disposed.
There is a widespread respect shown to the bones of game animals. Often symbolizing the souls of animals, the bones of animals are to be respected and returned to the place of their origins. In so doing, hunters facilitate the rebirth
of the animals. Among the Iglulik, dogs are not allowed to chew on the bones during the butchering of an animal, lest the soul of the animal be offended. Among the Naskapi, the bones of the beaver are ritually deposited back in the river from which the beaver came, to please the “giant beaver,” Master of the Beaver, so he might look favorably on the hunter and allow the spirit of the animal to return to life. The bones of other game animals are ritually collected and placed in trees near where the animals were hunted or eaten, to honor the animals. Among the Plateau peoples, the bones of salmon are returned to rivers to be reborn. As a link to the soul, the bones can also be used in divination. Among the Naskapi, a hunter attempts to induce a dream, pwamu’, to communicate with the animal’s spirit. If the soul of the animal, such as a caribou or beaver, comes to the hunter, the dream can be clarified by charring the shoulder blade of the animal. When reading the resulting marks on the burnt bone is accompanied by singing and drumming, the marks reveal the language of the animal’s soul, guiding the hunter to where the animal can be located.
As in any kinship-based relationship, reciprocity is needed if the animal-human relationship is to continue. If an animal “brother” is to offer its flesh to a hunter, a gift must be given in exchange. If the salmon spirit is to assist a shaman in the salmon harvest, the shaman must give respect to his suumesh (the spiritual power of the salmon). These exchanges can involve a wide variety of symbolic gifts, such as the souls of an enemy, as among the Desana, or adherence to an elaborate set of respect rules and taboos, as exemplified by the Iglulik. When the balance is maintained, the animal populations are replenished and maintained, and the hunters are offered the flesh of their animal kinsmen. By entering into a relationship with the Animal Peoples, power is then applied back to perpetuating animal, as well as human, kinsmen.
The various exchanges seek not only to maintain the assistance of a guardian animal spirit and garner the favor of the game animal itself, but also to secure the goodwill of a prominent Animal Person or Master of Animals who oversees the game animals. When an imbalance in the gift exchanges occurs, as when a hunter kills too many animals or the dogs chew on the bones, the animal flesh is withheld
from the hunter, and the human populations suffer. It would then be the responsibility of the shaman to help restore the balance by traveling to the place of the Master of the Animals and appeasing it.
Among the Desana there are two Vai-mahse, Masters of the Animals, one for the animals of the forests, a masculine being, and the other for the fish of the rivers, a feminine being. Their periodic sexual visits with each other assure animal and fish offspring. Vai-mahse can appear as a dwarf painted red, or as a small lizard. In a hallucinated state the paye travels to the Milky Way and with the help of Viho-mahse, the Master of the viho snuff, negotiates an exchange. For the souls of humans from a neighboring tribe the hunters will receive game animals; by the death of humans the loss of animals is replenished. If a hunter kills the wrong animals, for whom an exchange was not negotiated, Vai-mahse may send sickness or dangerous animals, and famine may result.
An Iglulik angakut seeks to keep the right balance between humans and the domain of animals, presided over by Takanakapsaluk, Mother of the Sea Animals. When too many animals are taken, or when taboos are broken, the angakut must restore the imbalance by “fall[ing] down in order to bring to light the animals hunted,” that is, by journeying to the dangerous bottom of the sea and the abode of Takanakapsaluk. There he must win her favor.
In the Mandan Okipa ceremony (of the Great Plains of North America), the assistance of the Animal People was called upon to perpetuate the buffalo herds and a good hunt. Dancers became key primordial beings, such as Lone Man (Buffalo Spirit), Hoita (Speckled Eagle), and, dressed in a coyote hide, First Creator. The Buffalo dancers had blackened bodies with white and red strips on their legs and arms, and wore a buffalo head, buffalo hair anklets, breechcloth, and tails on their backs. The ritual drama of the ceremony sought to replicate the creation time, dramatizing a period of struggle and famine, when the buffalo were eventfully released from their captivity in Dog Den Butte. If the dancers were successful, the transformative power of the Mythic Animal People was brought to bear, renewing and perpetuating the world of animals and humans alike.
Rodney Frey
See also: Dreams and Visions; Ecology and Shamanism; Hopi Shamanism; Horses; Initiation; Iroquois Shamanism and Secret Societies; North American Oral Traditions and Shamanism; Trance Dance; Transformation
References and further reading:
Benedict, Ruth. 1923. The Concept of the
Guardian Spirit in North America. Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, no. 29. Menasha, WI: American
Anthropological Association.
Bowers, Alfred. 1950. Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Frey, Rodney. 1987. The World of the Crow Indians: As Driftwood Lodges. Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press.
———. 2001. Landscape Traveled by Crane and Coyote: The World of the Schitsu’umsh (Coeur d’Alene). Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.
Harrod, Howard. 2000. The Animals Came Dancing: Native American Sacred Ecology and Animal Kinship. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Myerhoff, Barbara. Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Nelson, Richard. Make Prayers to Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Rasmussen, Knud. 1929. Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos. Report of the Fifth
Thule Expedition, 1921—1924, vol. 7. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag.
———. 1931. The Netsilik Eskimos: Social Life and Spiritual Cultures. Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921—1924, vol. 8.
Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag.
Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo. 1971. Amazonian Cosmos: The Sexual and Religious Symbolism of the Tukano Indians. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
———. 1975. The Shaman and the Jaguar: A Study of Narcotic Drugs among the Indians of the Columbia. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Speck, Frank. 1935. Naskapi: The Savage Hunters of the Labrador Peninsula. Norman: University of Oklahoma.
ANIMAL SYMBOLISM (ASIA)
Animals and plants are intimately related to aboriginal religions and to shamanism and its practices in particular. In this respect, European, Central Asian, and North African shamanism probably have the longest history of evidence of this association: many petroglyphs, dating from the Upper Paleolithic to the premodern period, arguably depict shamans, who are always surrounded by animals. The relation between shamans or other practitioners of aboriginal traditions and animals and plants is extremely multifaceted and complex. Animals and plants and animal-anthropomorphic figures, mythic or real, sacred or profane, have played very diverse roles within and across Asian cultures. Unfortunately, Eurasian shamanism, much of the territory of the practice of which falls within China, Mongolia, and the former USSR, has not been studied in all its diversity due to the severe ideological restrictions in the above-mentioned countries (Hutton 2001). One of the most regrettable results of this is that very rich data on the traditional myths and folklore, collected by the folklorists in the twentieth century, was called secular folklore and was almost never linked to the shamanic and other aboriginal religious practices of which it has been a natural part. Fortunately, it is still not too late to make such a connection, using the unpublished archival materials and field research. It is this material that makes it possible to discuss the categorization of the different roles and functions that animals play in the myth and practice of Eurasian shamanism.
Animals in the Creation Myths
Most of the creation myths of the aboriginal nations of Asia do not involve an animal as the Creator. Usually, the Creator is vaguely anthropomorphic or uniconic (shapeless). The exception to this general rule in Eurasia is found among Paleoasian groups (Mongoloid peoples of northeastern Asia—the Chukchee, Itel’men, and others), who consider the Raven (Kutkh) to be the Trickster-Creator (and the shamanic prototype). This fact and the proximity of the above-mentioned groups to North America (Paleoasians live in the far northeast of Siberia, mostly along the northern Pacific coast) sug
gests the shared roots with a number of the West Coast Native groups of North America (e.g., Tlingit, Haida) whose mythology has striking similarities to the Paleoasians’.
Although the Creator in the myths of most aboriginal cultures of Eurasia cannot be easily connected with any animal figure, however, he (or sometimes she, or it, or they) always has animal helpers, who are created prior to humans and function as demiurges (supernatural beings imagined as creating or fashioning the world in subordination to the Supreme Being). The list of such animals varies from culture to culture (sometimes, animals work as teams during the creation process, performing different functions) and is very extensive: For example, among Finno-Ugrians (Saami, Khanty, et al.) a very important spirit-animal demiurge is a duck, or a loon; among the Ainu of Hokkaido, Japan, it is a type of magpie, and so on. However, almost all of the animals that a given culture lives among have certain roles in the Creation process and Mythic Time, and thus are marked with specific sacred properties.
In some cultures, myths tell about a first attempt at mankind, or an alternative mankind, or even several alternatives, each a different species. The leading (but not unique) candidate for the role of an alternative mankind throughout boreal and circumpolar Eurasia is the bear. Thus, animals are considered the older siblings of humans, and their treatment in the religious context reflects the family hierarchy of the group in question, where younger and older siblings have their specific roles, rights, and responsibilities. Being the “first ones,” animals are considered to have a more immediate connection to the Spirit World, and often function as its emanations and messengers. In these roles they are employed by shamans.
Moreover, many stories of the Mythic Time tell of animals interbreeding with humans. It is very important to notice that in most totemic beliefs that involve the descent of a lineage from an animal, the animal is not the only ancestor of a given lineage, but is one of the proto-parents (the other one is usually either a human, or a mythic being, as illustrated by the myth of the origin of Tibetans, according to which they originated from an ape and an ogress). The totemic ancestors are not necessarily the important animals of the Creation myths. However, as in the case of the Bulagat
and Ekhirit clans of Buryats (Lake Baikal area, Russia) whose totems are, respectively, Blue Bull (Bukha-Noyon) and a Dogfish, the totems are not the ancestors, but rather the patrons of the clans from among the animals of the creation team. Shamans usually employ as their spirit helpers not the totemic animals, but rather the animals who are/were important in the Creation myths—due to the specific powers they have, which made them so important during the Creation process.
Three Spheres and
Varieties of Animal Roles
Shamans, and the practices of traditional religions in general, function as a support of the balance, or homeostasis (Hamayon 1994, 109—125) of three closely connected and interpenetrating, but nonetheless differentiated spheres of the aboriginal universe: the human sphere, the spirit sphere, and the natural sphere. The communication/negotiation may be happening in any direction between any of the two spheres to affect the third one. In the hunting ceremonies, spirits (the Masters of the Animals, who are not the animals themselves) are asked to intercede on behalf of humans to bring the game. In shamanic ceremonies, animal spirits are the helpers or vehicles who carry the shaman (or that being into whom the shaman transforms) to the non-animal spirits and gods. In many cases, a shaman has to contact the non-animal spirits to mend an offense committed against an animal by a human. Finally, in many cultures, animals are treated as the messengers or, sometimes, manifestations of the spirits (a very developed view of this type is found among the Ainu of Hokkaido [Spe-vakovsky 1994 and Yamada 1994]). In particular, this view is reflected in the practice of the interpretation of the omens (often, but not exclusively, conducted by shamans) and in the sending off of the spirit of the hunted game (Watanabe 1994, 55—56). More combinations of this type may be mentioned, but they all have the three realities—the human, natural, and spirit worlds—as their variables. And in all, the shaman is a representative of the human sphere on behalf of the community.
The following are the main roles that animals play in traditional religions and shamanic practice:
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1. Protector and guide
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2. Totem
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3. Object of shaman’s (or hunter’s) partial or complete identification
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4. Commodity offered to the spirit(s) in the form of sacrifice
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5. Messenger, sometimes a malignant spirit in the disguise of an animal, often sent by another human
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6. Nagual (spirit-animal, protector)
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7. A shaman’s vehicle (to the spirit-world), such as a horse or elk
In addition, in some cultures there are a number of entirely mythic animals (e.g., Altai ker-dyutpa, the fish-like monsters of the Underworld) whom shamans have to confront and appease during their journeys. Also, there are a number of animal-astral characters who do not play an active role in shamanizing but are nonetheless addressed and reflected in myths (e.g., Altai “Three Elk Does”—Orion constellation). There has been an ongoing speculation, that the Asian (Chinese, Tibetan, et al.) animal cycle calendar is intimately connected with early shamanistic beliefs of the inhabitants of Central Asia and China. This list is by no means exhaustive, and also each of the mentioned categories can be divided into subcategories.
Protector-Guide Animals
In some groups of Eurasia, shamanic spirit-protectors are only animals, in others they may be animals, various mythological personae, and ancestors-humans, and in others only the human ancestors play this role. However, even in the latter category (Altai shamans), animals or their spirits, although not part of the core guardian spirit retinue of a shaman, are still employed as protector-sprits and are called during the ceremonies. In Tuvan shamanism, the term eeren, or ongut, denotes the category of spirits, protectors, and guides, but not necessarily the core protectors. It has extremely complicated semantics. An eeren may be an animal spirit, or an object that is endowed with power (but not quite personified) and is used as a sacred tool. An eeren may be an animal, a mythic monster, or such a thing as a khomu (musical instrument), solongo (rainbow, or its representation), or kuzungu (mirror) (Diakonova 1981, 145-148).
Birds are usually related to the Upper World, deer, wolf, and elk, to the Middle World, and bear, badger, wolverine, and, especially, the snake, to the Lower World. Some animal spirits are especially valued for being representatives of the several worlds; thus, as noted, the duck or loon, representing air, water, and under-water (earth), is a shamanic guide par excellence among Finno-Ugrians (Komi, Saami, Khanty and others), Samoedians (Nentsy), and other groups.
Most (but not all) of the spirit-animals depicted on the shamanic costumes, drums, and other accessories belong to this category.
Totems
As mentioned above, totemism in Asian traditions takes many diverse forms. Usually, shamans are not involved with the totemic animals, but there are exceptions. Thus, the bear among the Khanty may be a totem and, at the same time a spirit helper of a particular shaman. Also, a vague mixture of a totemic animal, a shamanic protector-animal, and even a god, who sometimes takes on a human form, sometimes an animal form (specifically a tiger), is known in Korean Shamanism (Lee 1981, 19). In general, in the cultures that have been exposed for a long time to the great world religious traditions such as Buddhism (Tibet, Ladakh, China) the categories of animals and nonanimal spirits employed by shamans tend to merge and become vague.
Objects of Shaman’s Identification
Among the Eurasian aboriginal groups, the term soul cannot be used as it is in Western tradition, because they typically believe in multiple “souls,” or rather aspects of a human (or animal, or spirit) being. The shaman’s identification with an animal is usually an identification with that animal’s image, which carries a particular ability, be it sight, stamina, or ability to fly. Thus some aspect of an animal, usually not the animal in totality, but rather disparate parts such as feathers and limbs, is depicted on the shamanic costume and other accessories. Interestingly, Finno-Ugrian groups, as well as the nations of the Caucasus that have some rudiments of shamanic beliefs, believe in the “vere-animal” phenomenon (that is, the physical transforma
tion of a human into an animal), whereas this belief apparently has not been documented for the trans-Uralic (Asian), or non-Finno-Ugric groups.
Commodities
This category is almost entirely confined to groups in which hunting-gathering patterns were firmly replaced by herding long ago. Examples of such groups are Buryats, Mongolians, Altai-Sayan Turkic groups (Altai, Khakass, Tuvan), Sakha (Yakuts), various ethnic groups of Northern China, and Koreans. The shamanic pattern among such groups is strikingly different from the shamanism of the hunter-gatherers. One of the important differences between the hunter-gatherers and the herders is their respective attitudes to what is commonly called a sacrifice. Whereas for the hunter-gatherers it always has an element of sending off the animal (who is a spiritual sibling), and the carcass of an animal is treated with utmost respect, among herders the sacrifice of a reindeer, a horse, or a sheep is, first and foremost, an offering of valuable property to the spirit in question. The offered animal does not have value in itself, but is treated as a commodity that the spirit would enjoy. Missionaryethnographer Verbitsky, who worked among the Altaians in the late nineteenth century, erroneously saw the sacrifice of damaged horses to Erlik, the god of the Underworld, as the sign of people’s dislike of an “evil god” (Verbitsky 1893, 62). Apparently, he did not know that, according to Altai belief, in the Underworld objects behaved in the opposite fashion, compared to the objects of the Middle World: Only things that were broken or damaged in the Middle World were whole and functional in the Underworld.
Messenger
Animals (sometimes all, sometimes just certain species) are often seen as messengers of the spirits (good or bad). Among the peoples of the lower Amur River in Northeast Asia (the Ul’chi, the Nivkh, and the Evenki), such a messenger is the Siberian tiger. His name, amba, means “master.” His appearance may mean many things, but it is always seen as an awesome omen. Prophetically, the Russian settlers
of the area use amba as a slang term for death. Even the game animal, which has been sent to be hunted, is seen as a messenger. Therefore, it is sent off in a ceremony after having been consumed (or killed). The malignant messengers, which are seen as evil spirits disguised as animals, often insects, are usually sent by an enemy shaman or a warlock. Sometimes, such animals are warlocks themselves (or one of their aspects, or “souls,” is). Across the Eurasian boreal area, a bear, woken up in winter and wandering, is commonly seen as one of these spirits. For the above-mentioned people of lower Amur as well as for the Manchus, a tiger may sometimes be seen as a malignant messenger.
Nagual
This term, used by the Mazatecan in Oaxaca, Mexico, denotes a spirit-animal that is a protector of a person (whether shaman or not). The difference from other spirit-protectors lies in the fact that this type of protector is embodied in an individual animal whose life is intimately connected with the life of the protected person. The research on nagualism in Asia has been very limited, but it is possible to say confidently that such a phenomenon exists in one or another form in many of the Asian groups. For example, among the Altai, an animal and a plant (both a species and a certain specimen) are called bayana (or payana) and occupy a position somewhere between a totem and a nagual. According to the author’s field data, mending damage done to one’s bayana, or healing the harm done by its destruction, is one of the goals of shamanic sessions.
Shamanic Vehicle
A peculiar variation of the idea, close to nagual-ism, can be found in the Siberian notion, among the Altaians, Tuvans, and Evenki, of the spiritual value of the shamanic drum. Whereas in some cultures the drum is simply a tool and can be replaced by another drum, for the Altaians it is an animal, which is strongly connected to the drum’s owner. The skin of the drum is usually taken from an elk, killed in a very particular manner, and the “soul” of the elk, its pura, or bura, is placed into the drum through a fairly sophisticated ceremony. The drum (or rather, its bura) is an object of suppli
cation and sacrifice, performed by the shaman at every session. Thus, the drum (or its bura) becomes a vehicle and, simultaneously, an assistant to the shaman. Each shaman can have only a limited amount of drums during his or her lifetime. After a drum is damaged, its skin is broken to release the bura. After the last drum destined for a given shaman cannot serve anymore, the shaman is expected to die, and the skin of the drum is broken at the funeral. Despite the fact that the skin of an Altai drum is always made out of elk hide, it is often called a horse, or even a camel. The bura, in the form of an animal, is usually depicted on the surface of the drum. In both Chinese folk cults and Daoism, the notion of an animal as the vehicle for a mystic is quite prominent: This might indicate that there is a relationship between Dao-ism and shamanism.
Finally, in many Asian cultures, a number of entirely mythic animal figures are present in traditional religions, especially in shamanism. Although some of these human-animal hybrids, which often serve as shamans’ spirits, are apparently indigenous to the culture in question, other beings are evidently imported from elsewhere. This kind of foreign origin is especially characteristic of the Inner Asian Turkic ethnic groups. Thus, for example, the Altai fish-like monster ker-dyutpa (depicted on the shamanic costume and confronted by shamans during their journeys to the Underworld) was borrowed from Tibetan mythology (Sagalaev 1984, 72). Most such borrowings can be traced to China, Tibet, India, or Iran. Although tracing the origins of various mythological personae imported into Asian shamanism is a fascinating topic, very little work has been done in this direction.
The theme of animals in Asian shamanism and other traditional beliefs and practices still needs much research. There are two directions for cross-cultural research in this area. The first involves research along the line of cultures’ common origin. Many of the cultures of Asia are genetically related and share common mythologies, which are reflected in their practices. The second involves research in areas that share the same ecology (Irimoto and Yamada 1994). Although cultures that occupy the same or similar ecological zones (e.g., groups of the Pacific East and West Coasts) do not show any signs of being genetically related, their beliefs, especially
with respect to animals, are strikingly similar. When both kinds of cross-cultural research are done, it may shed light on the often raised question: What is more likely to make the beliefs and practices of two cultures resemble each other, shared habitat or common origin?
Andrei Vinogradov
See also: Ainu Shamanism; Buryat Shamanism; Chinese Shamanism, Classical; Daoism and Shamanism; Deer Imagery and Shamanism; Dreams and Visions; Drums, Shamanic: Form and Structure; Ecology and Shamanism; Finno-Ugric Shamanism;
Horses; Korean Shamanism; Mongolian Shamanic Tradition and Literature; Russian Folklore and Shamanism; Sakha Shamanism; Tibetan Shamanism; Transformation; Tuvan Shamanism
References and further reading:
Diakonova, V. P. 1981. “Tuvinskie shamany i ikh sotsial’naia rol’ v obshchestve” [Tuvan shamans and their social role]. Pp. 129—165 in Problemy Obshchestvennogo Soznaniia Aborigenov Sibirii [Problems of Social Consciousness of Aboriginal Siberians]. Edited by I. S. Vdovin. Leningrad: Nauka.
Hamayon, Roberte. 1994. “Shamanism: A Religion of Nature?” Pp. 109-125 in Circumpolar Religion and Ecology. Edited by Irimoto Takashi and Yamada Takako. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.
Humphrey, Caroline, and U. Onon. 1996. Shamans and Elders: Experience, Knowledge, and Power among the Daur Mongols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hutton, Ronald. 2001. Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and Western Imagination. London and New York: Hambledon.
Irimoto Takashi and Yamada Takako, eds. 1994. Circumpolar Religion and Ecology. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.
Lee, Jung Yong. 1981. Korean Shamanistic Rituals. New York: Mouton Publishers.
Sagalaev, A. M. 1984. Mifologiia i Verovaniia Altaitsev: Tsentral’no-aziatskie vliianiia [Mythology and Beliefs of Altaians: Central Asian Influences] Novosibirsk, Russia: Nauka.
Shirokogoroff, S. M. 1935. Psychomental Complex of the Tungus. London: Kegan Paul.
Spevakovsky, A. B. 1994. “Animal Cults and Ecology: Ainu and East Siberian Examples.”
Pp. 103—109 in Circumpolar Religion and Ecology. Edited by Irimoto Takashi and Yamada Takako. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.
Verbitsky, V. I. 1893. Altaiskie Inorodtsy [Altai Natives]. Moscow.
Watanabe Hitoshi. 1994. “The Animal Cult of Northern Hunter-Gatherers: Patterns and Their Ecological Implications.” Pp. 47—69 in Circumpolar Religion and Ecology. Edited by Irimoto Takashi and Yamada Takako. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.
Yamada Takako. 1994. “Animals as the Intersection of Religion and Ecology: An Ainu Example.” Pp. 69—103 in Circumpolar Religion and Ecology. Edited by Irimoto Takashi and Yamada Takako. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.
———. 1999. An Anthropology of Animism and Shamanism. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.
ARCHAEOLOGY OF SHAMANISM
Shamanism is widely distributed and commonly (even if not universally) associated with huntergatherers. These facts have led various researchers to propose that it is not simply an ancient religious system, but also the original system of belief brought into the Americas, if not perhaps even the first religion of humankind (e.g., Furst 1977; LaBarre 1980). Research on the archaeology of shamanism has been stimulated by these hypotheses as well as by interest in prehistoric religion more generally.
Archaeologists typically investigate prehistoric shamanism using three types of evidence: (1) paleoethnobotanical data on hallucinogenic plants in the archaeological record; (2) iconography and symbolism; and (3) less commonly, other types of ritual or ceremonial remains. The first two evidential concerns are predicated on the importance of altered states of consciousness in shamanistic practice; the third is often tied to some type of ethnographic analogy (i.e., comparisons with ethnographically described rituals and beliefs of a later date). The best studies combine different types of evidence and approaches, but all confront the problem of coming up with a definition for shamanism that can be recognized archaeologi-
cally. That is, although cross-cultural studies have identified characteristics of “classic” shamanism in order to distinguish it from other magico-religious practices and practitioners (e.g., Winkelman 1992), isolating the evidence upon which such distinctions can be made in the archaeological record is a difficult task.
Paleolithic and Neolithic Eurasia
Archaeological investigations of shamanism have concentrated on Eurasia and the Americas, with an important but smaller body of work in southern Africa. In greater Eurasia they have emphasized three general topics: (a) the timedepth of Siberian and central Asian shamanism; (b) Paleolithic rock art of western Europe; and, recently, (c) western European Neolithic passage tombs. The antiquity of Siberian shamanism is important, inasmuch as Siberia is often described as the cradle of shamanism. In particular, the first inhabitants of the Americas migrated into the hemisphere from eastern Siberia, suggesting that this region may be the source for the New World shamanistic complex and, if so, that shamanism must be Paleolithic in age (over 10,000 years old) in its putative northeastern Asiatic homeland. Debate still surrounds this question, partly because the archaeological record in Siberia is little studied.
With respect to antiquity, Ekaterina Devlet (2001) cited continuities in the form of iconography on historical shamanic costumes and ritual objects (especially drums) with certain unusual burials and the iconography of Siberian rock art. The similarities she identifies suggest that shamanism dates from at least the Bronze Age (approximately 3,000 years ago) in this region. Similarly, Andrzej Rozwadowski (2001), concluded that Bronze Age (and perhaps late Neolithic) rock art in Central Asia is shamanistic. Both cases are supported by evidence for the ritual use of the narcotic cannabis, found in Bronze Age Siberian tombs dating from 500—300 B.C.E. (Rudenko 1970). But in none of these examples, nor in any others, do archaeologists propose the kind of Paleolithic age required to support arguments for a Siberian origin for New World shamanism. Whether this lack of evidence is due to the limited archaeological work in Siberia and Central Asia or, alternatively, is the case because the Asiatic-origin hypothesis is simply wrong, remains unresolved.
Two circumstances make it seem more likely that the Asiatic-origin hypothesis is wrong. For one thing, cross-cultural ethnographic and neuropsychological studies suggest that the widespread distribution of shamanism is not solely due to diffusion but instead is partly a result of independent invention based on innate human capacities (Winkelman 1992); shamanism, in other words, may not have originated only in a single region. The related circumstance involves the second major topic in the archaeology of Eurasian shamanism: the origin and meaning of western European rock art, especially the Paleolithic cave art of France and Spain. This art is exclusively associated with anatomically modern humans (i.e., Homo sapiens, not Neanderthal). Recent research at Chauvet Cave in the Ardeche region of southeastern France demonstrates that it was created as early as 33,000 years ago; work at other caves shows that it continued to be made until about 10,000 years ago (Lewis-Williams 2002a). Yet no evidence beyond potential cross-cultural universals suggests any direct linkage between this art and Siberian shamanistic beliefs and practices, and these cross-cultural universals may be neurobiologically rather than culturally based (Winkelman 2002).
Compelling evidence has been presented supporting the interpretation that some if not much European Paleolithic art is shamanistic in origin, and that it depicts visionary imagery (LewisWilliams and Dowson 1988; Lewis-Williams 2002a). Foretelling detailed arguments made recently by J. David Lewis-Williams, Weston LaBarre described the art at two important French caves thus: “The dancing-shaman [at Les Trois Freres] is [not a ’god’ but] a shamanic trickster-transformer; the cave artist at Lascaux perceives an unevenness in the rock wall and on this he paints the animal into existence deep in the womb of the earth. He literally only creates what he ’conceives’—out of a half-reality he has perceived” (1980, 53-54).
Important here is the context of the sites: Art in the deep recesses of the caves occurs in locations where sensory deprivation is likely, and this can easily result in an altered state of consciousness; humans are then predisposed to enter trance at the sites. More directly, the art itself is supportive of such an interpretation, inasmuch as it includes kinds, mixtures, and characteristics of motifs that, based on clinical neuropsycholog
ical studies, are known to be generated as mental images and somatic hallucinations in trance (Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988).
Lewis-Williams’s (2002a) detailed analysis of the caves suggested that they served as entries into the supernatural; and that shaman-artists engraved and painted the spirits they perceived on the cave wall or ceiling, during their visionary experiences, on that rock surface—which served as a kind of veil between the mundane and the sacred. To Lewis-Williams, the appearance of European Paleolithic rock art signals not only the first evidence of shamanism and art, but also the development of a fully modern human consciousness; one that was neurally capable of achieving trance but, perhaps more importantly, was mentally able to invest that brain-mind state with the greatest emotional and intellectual significance.
Interpretation of the subsequent Neolithic passage tombs of western Europe as shamanistic was first stimulated by the discovery of opium residues and ceramic braziers at sites dating to approximately 6,000 years ago. These finds caused Andrew Sherrat (1991) to hypothesize the existence of a cult that spread from south to north, with the inhalation of narcotics related to “mortuary rituals and communication with the ancestors” (Sherrat 1995, 28). Richard Bradley (1989) noted that the engravings on curbstones at some of these sites, such as Newgrange and Knowth, Ireland, resembled the geometric designs that Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson (1988) had identified in rock art as exemplary of the mental imagery of trance. Bradley noted further parallels between the mental images of trance and the designs on Grooved Ware ceramics, dating from about 4400 to 5000 years ago in southern England and found in ritual contexts. Jeremy Dronfield (e.g., 1996) reported the recovery of seeds and pollen of imported psychoactive henbane found in Grooved Ware at a megalithic ceremonial complex at Balfarg, Scotland. Based on neuropsychological analysis, he further concluded that various trance-induction techniques were employed at these sites.
In comparing the evidence for Paleolithic versus Neolithic shamanism in western Europe, Lewis-Williams and Dowson (1993) suggested a shift in the Neolithic to more politically controlled access to altered states of consciousness, toward the use of shamanistic techniques to ac
cess spirits of ancestors associated with these grave sites. Neolithic passage tombs, then, may not have been shamanistic in the narrower classic meanings of this term, but instead may have been associated with magico-religious practices, including trance induction techniques, more similar to mediumistic and spirit possession cults (cf. Winkelman 1992).
The Americas
The prevalence of shamanism in Native American cultures and their direct ties to the archaeological record have contributed to considerable research on prehistoric shamanism in the New World. This research has emphasized two general concerns: the evidence for and the implications of shamanism among North American hunter-gatherer cultures, and the interpretation of shamanistic elements in the art and iconography of the large-scale cultures of Mesoamerica and South America.
The mescal, or red, bean (Sophora secundi-flora), for example, was used historically by shamans in various hunter-gatherer cultures for vision questing on the southern Great Plains of North America (Howard 1957). In the TransPecos region of Texas, paleoethnobotanical evidence of this plant has been found in archaeological contexts extending back to Paleo-Indian times, more than 10,000 years ago; the Texas buckeye (Ugnadia speciosa), whose seeds are a particularly potent hallucinogen, has been found in association with the mescal bean in a 9,000-year-old deposit; peyote (Lophophora williamsi) has been identified archaeologically as early as 7,000 years ago; and jimsonweed (Datura stramonium) about 5,000 years ago (Campbell 1958; Boyd 1998). These discoveries suggest a hallucinogenic tradition of great antiquity. This tradition has been linked to the rock paintings of the lower Pecos River region for the period of about 3,000 to 4,000 ago, as these paintings are, for numerous reasons, widely recognized as shamanistic in origin (Boyd 1998).
Further study of the antiquity of North American shamanism has occurred in the Mojave Desert, California. Four lines of evidence provide support for Paleo-Indian origins for a central component of this religious system: the vision quest (Whitley et al. 1999). The evidence includes more than 10,000 years of con
tinuity in the creation of rock engravings (made historically to portray trance imagery experienced during the shamans’ vision quests); the continuity is evident in the general rock art motifs created (including imagery linked to altered states of consciousness), as well as in four specific iconographic aspects of the dominant iconic motif; in site use; and in the use of quartz hammerstones to make the engravings.
In the last case, use of quartz hammerstones is linked to the ethnographic practice of breaking quartz during vision quests to release the supernatural power said to be present in this common mineral. This belief is itself tied to physical properties of quartz: When quartz is struck, triboluminescence (a change at the atomic level in the mineral) causes it to glow, thereby providing a physical manifestation of the rock’s putative supernatural power. The almost universal association between shamans and quartz is then explained by the natural logic resulting from this physical property of the mineral, a conclusion further supported by the fact that archaeologically recovered quartz specimens commonly display evidence of battering or rubbing.
As the Pecos and Mojave examples imply, archaeological studies of North American shamanism are frequently tied to rock art research, with much if not most hunter-gatherer rock art on the continent now recognized as shamanistic in origin. Although this fact might be taken to suggest a monolithic and timeless interpretation of this art, exactly the opposite is the case. The 3,000- to 4,000-year-old lower Pecos rock art, for example, includes detailed paintings of apparent peyote rituals that are unlike rock art elsewhere and derive from ritual practice otherwise not known archaeologically or ethnographically in the Trans-Pecos region (Boyd 1998). Similarly, although the shamanistic basis for Mojave Desert rock art has been shown to extend back to Paleo-Indian times (Whitley et al. 1999), this by no means suggests that the social place of the art and the shamanism that it implies was in any way static and unchanging. In fact, the ideological role of this art and the sociopolitical position of its shamancreators apparently changed significantly between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago, during a period of climate change and adaptive shifts, reflecting changing gender relations in societies and the emergence of bands with shaman-head
men (Whitley 1994a). Among prehistoric North American hunter-gatherer cultures, at least, shamanism served as a unifying but not unitary symbolic and religious system.
The diversity in the expression of shamanism in prehistoric America is best seen by comparison with the large-scale cultures of Mesoamerica and Andean South America. Although the religious systems of these civilizations were not shamanistic in the classic sense, the importance of shamanistic iconography in their art and the centrality of shamanistic techniques in their ritual practices is nonetheless inescapable. With about 130 of the 150 plant hallucinogens identified worldwide found in the Americas, LaBarre (1980) has hypothesized the existence of a “New World narcotic complex.” This does not appear to have resulted from unusual botanical circumstances in the Americas but instead from a very intensive and long-lasting interest in psychotropic plants taken by Native Americans, including those living in complex chiefdom- and state-level societies.
Evidence for the ritual use of hallucinogens then is present essentially from the Formative Period beginnings of these New World civilizations, starting about 3,000 years ago, and continues into the historical period, as was well-documented by the Spanish (Furst 1976). This use included a wide range of hallucinogenic plants, such as peyote, jimsonweed, native tobacco (Nicotiana spp.), ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi) vine, teonanacatl mushroom (Psilocybe mexicana), morning glory (Turbina corymbosa), and the San Juan cactus (Trichocereus pachanoi), among others. Evidence also exists of other practices intended to induce altered states of consciousness, including bloodletting and the possible ingestion of psychoactive secretions from the giant toad, Bufo marinus, which contains bufotenine and buftalin. The various substances were smoked, snuffed, eaten, drunken, taken as enemas, administered topically to the skin and eyes, and, in certain cases, carefully mixed using specific recipes in order to achieve particular hallucinogenic effects.
The importance of these hallucinogens and the altered states of consciousness that they were used to induce is shown dramatically in art and iconography, both by identifiable depictions of the hallucinogens themselves and through representations of their effects. Mushroom stone effigies are common at sites in the
highlands and Pacific slope of Guatemala prior to about 200 c.e., for example, as are stone “altars” made in the form of the Bufo marinus. In West Mexico, at about this same time, ceramic human and animal figurines are shown holding or eating peyote as well as taking snuff. Similarly, the San Juan cactus is shown in Peruvian sculpture, textiles, and ceramics, including examples from Chavin de Huantar, the first great Formative civilization in the Andean region, and other examples can be found in later cultures, especially the Moche, dating from the first millennium of the common era.
Equally importantly, a shamanic repertoire of symbolic themes such as mystical flight, death/rebirth, aggression, and bodily transformation is widely represented. All of these symbols are well known cross-culturally and can be linked to the somatic and emotional effects of altered states of consciousness; they were used as embodied metaphors for otherwise ineffable experiences (Whitley 1994b, 1998). Figurines and sculptures of “jaguar-priests” characteristic of the first major civilization of Mesoamerica, the Olmec of southern Mexico, for example, can be understood as conflations of humans and the predatory feline, which, throughout the lowland tropical Americas, is strongly associated with shamanic power. Humans in flight, which is to say having an out-of-body experience, are also present in Olmec iconography. Similarly, an early sculpture at Chavin de Huantar not only depicts the hallucinatory San Juan cactus, but also a standing human with serpentine hair, bird claws, and feline fangs.
Combinations of bird, reptile, and feline characteristics, sometimes also melded with human, are in fact a hallmark of shamanistic imagery for the civilizations of Mesoamerica and South America, speaking to the importance of transformation in the belief systems and ritual practices of these cultures (Furst 1976): that is, the transformation of ritual practitioners, during trance, into their supernatural alter egos. But perhaps the best expression of the shamanistic aspects of New World civilizations is provided by the Classic Maya, who occupied eastern Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras from about 200 to 1000 c.e.:
The act of communication between the human world and the Otherworld was represented by the most profound symbols of Maya
kingship: the Vision Serpent and the Doubleheaded Serpent Bar. In the rapture of bloodletting rituals, the king brought the great World Tree [axis mundi] into existence through the middle of the temple and opened the awesome doorway in the Otherworld. During both public and private bloodletting rituals, the Vision Serpent, which symbolized the path of communication between the two worlds, was seen rising in a cloud of incense and smoke above the temples housing the sculptured sanctums. (Schele and Friedel 1990, 68—69)
Shamanistic techniques and the art and imagery that resulted were not only part of the religious systems of New World civilizations, but were central to these systems, so central that they served as symbols of rulership. These systems appear to have involved a kind of institutionalized shamanism, or at least an institutionalized use of shamanistic techniques. In Mesoamerica, at least, this use involved rituals and public spectacles that implied a supernatural sanctification of rulership, pointing to the fact that, although the prehistoric connection between shamanistic power and political power may have not been complete, they were nonetheless joined at the hip; rarely did one exist without the other completely in step with it.
Southern Africa
Archaeological evidence for shamanism has been identified in many other cases in additional regions of the world, but one of the strongest bodies of evidence, and richest interpretive frameworks, has been developed for the southern San (or Bushmen) rock art of southern Africa (e.g., Lewis-Williams 2002b). Painted on rock shelters in open locations that (unlike European Paleolithic cave art) were adjacent to living areas, or engraved on open boulders in regions lacking shelters, this art provides a particularly detailed record of the San perception of the spirit world. Unlike the New World case, this supernatural realm appears to have been accessed largely through what is known as the communal Trance Dance, which was open to a large proportion of adult society. Again, due to the cross-cultural universals commonly cited in shamanistic practice and symbolism, the San art has many parallels with the shamanistic rock art of Paleolithic Europe and North America, including depictions
of motifs known to be generated as the mental imagery of trance, and the use of shamanic metaphors like death and flying for ineffable altered states of consciousness.
The southern African shamanistic tradition appears to be of great antiquity, rivaling the European Upper Paleolithic: At Apollo 11 Cave, Namibia, a painted plaquette was recovered from a stratigraphic layer dated to about 27,000 years ago. The plaquette portrays a feline with plantigrade rear feet, suggesting that it is a conflation of a human and an animal; this bodily transformation indicates continuity in belief throughout the Late Stone Age in this part of the world (Lewis-Williams 1984).
Archaeological research has traditionally emphasized material culture and material aspects of prehistory. The archaeology of religion, regardless of type, is in fact a relatively new and still somewhat undeveloped concern. As the above examples illustrate, however, substantial work has already occurred, contributing to some understanding of the prehistory of shamanism.
David S. Whitley
See also: Art and Shamanism; Central and
South American Shamanism; Entheogens and Shamanism; Mayan Shamanism; Peyote Ritual Use; Rock Art and Shamanism
References and further reading:
Boyd, Carolyn E. 1998. “Pictographic Evidence of Peyotism in the Lower Pecos, Texas Archaic.” Pp. 229—246 in The Archaeology of Rock Art. Edited by C. Chippindale and P. S. C. Ta^on. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bradley, Richard. 1989. “Deaths and Entrances: A Contextual Analysis of Megalithic Tombs.” Current Anthropology 30: 68—75.
Campbell, Thomas N. 1958. “The Origin of the Mescal Bean Cult.” American Anthropologist 60: 156—160.
Devlet, Ekaterina. 2001. “Rock Art and the Material Culture of Siberian and Central Asian Shamanism.” Pp. 43—55 in The Archaeology of Shamanism. Edited by N. Price. London: Routledge.
Dronfield, Jeremy. 1996. “Entering alternative Realities: Cognition, Art, and Architecture in Irish Passage Tombs.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 6: 37—72.
Furst, Peter T. 1976. Hallucinogens and Culture. Novato, CA: Chandler and Sharp.
———. 1977. “The Roots and Continuities of Shamanism.” Pp. 1—28 in Stones, Bones and Skin: Ritual and Shamanic Art. Edited by A. Brodzky, R. Daneswich and N. Johnson. Toronto: Artscanada.
Howard, J. H. 1957. “The Mescal Bean Cult of the Central and Southern Plains: Ancestor of the Peyote Cult?” American Anthropologist 59: 75-87.
LaBarre, Weston. 1980. Culture in Context: Selected Writings of Weston LaBarre. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Lewis-Williams, J. David. 1984. “Ideological Continuities in Prehistoric Southern Africa: The Evidence of Rock Art.” Pp. 225-252 in Past and Present in Hunter-Gatherer Studies. Edited by C. Schrire. New York: Academic Press.
———. 2002a. The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art. London: Thames and Hudson.
———. 2002b. A Cosmos in Stone: Interpreting Religion and Society Through Rock Art. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Lewis-Williams, J. David, and Thomas A. Dowson. 1988. “The Signs of All Times: Entoptic Phenomena in Upper Paleolithic Rock Art.” Current Anthropology 29: 201-245.
———. 1993. “On Vision and Power in the Neolithic: Evidence from the Decorated Monuments.” Current Anthropology 34: 55-65.
Rozwadowski, Andrzej. 2001. “Sun Gods or Shamans? Interpreting the ’Solar-Headed’ Petroglyphs of Central Asia.” Pp. 65-86 in The Archaeology of Shamanism. Edited by N. Price. London: Routledge.
Rudenko, S. I. 1970. Frozen Tombs of Siberia: The Pazyryk Burials of Bronze Age Horsemen. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Schele, Linda, and David Friedel. 1990. A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya. New York: William Morrow and Company.
Sherrat, Andrew. 1991. “Sacred and Profane Substances: The Ritual Use of Narcotics in Later Neolithic Europe.” Pp. 50-64 in Sacred and Profane: Proceedings of a Conference on Archaeology, Ritual and Religion, Monograph 32. Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology.
———. 1995. “Alcohol and Its Alternatives: Symbol and Substance in Pre-Industrial
Cultures.” Pp. 11-46 in Consuming Habits: Drugs in History and Anthropology. Edited by J. Goodman, P. E. Lovejoy and A. Sherratt.
London: Routledge.
Sutherland, P. 2001. “Shamanism and the Iconography of Paleo-Eskimo Art.” Pp. 135-145 in The Archaeology of Shamanism. Edited by N. Price. London: Routledge.
Whitley, David S. 1994a. “By the Hunter, for the Gatherer: Art, Social Relations and Subsistence Change in the Prehistoric Great Basin.” World Archaeology 25: 356-372.
———. 1994b. “Shamanism, Natural Modeling and the Rock Art of Far Western North America.” Pp. 1-43 in Shamanism and Rock Art in North America. Edited by S. Turpin.
San Antonio, TX: Rock Art Foundation, Inc., Special Publication 1.
———. 1998. “Cognitive Neuroscience, Shamanism and the Rock Art of Native California.” Anthropology of Consciousness 9: 22-36.
Whitley, David S., Ronald I. Dorn, Joseph M. Simon, Robert Rechtman, and Tamara K. Whitley. 1999. “Sally’s Rockshelter and the Archaeology of the Vision Quest.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9: 221-247.
Winkelman, Michael. 1992. “Shamans, Priests and Witches: A Cross Cultural Study of Magico-Religious Practitioners.” Anthropological Research Papers No. 44. Arizona State University, Tempe.
———. 2002. “Shamanism and Cognitive Evolution.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 12: 71-101.
ART AND SHAMANISM
The meaning of the terms shamanism and art has been much debated; to consider both together, then, is a challenging task. Shamanism is an academic construct: Those from the West who encountered Siberian shamans in the eighteenth century (see, e.g., Hutton 2002), and thereafter compared them with similar ecstatic priests and mediums (see, e.g., Narby and Huxley 2001), created shaman-ism as a generic term ascribed to a wide diversity of socioreligious practices worldwide (see, e.g., Eliade 1989). The use of such a generalizing term contributed to a tendency to ignore the diversity of practitioners,
and now, in a neoshamanic era, shamanisms are further decontextualised, universalized, and romanticized (and in some instances honored) by Westerners wanting to be shamans (Wallis 2003). The term art has endured a similar process of homogenization, having also emerged as a concept in the West in the eighteenth century, defined according to Kantian and Hegelian aesthetics and notions of genius, connoisseurship, and taste; in the early twenty-first century, almost any form of visual (and material) culture can be incorporated into the art dealer-critic system. Thus one can make a good case that shamanism and art have been constructed historically by the West. When these terms are applied to non-Western communities, then, as in the study of shamanic art, the approach must be self-consciously critical and sensitive to diversity among indigenous and prehistoric communities. Recent work in the field has tried to take this imperative into account.
The Problem of Defining the Terms
Scholars have yet to agree on a discrete definition of shamanism (Harvey 2002), but Thomas Dowson (1999) argued that rather than pin shamans down by going through a checklist of features, specific religious phenomena, or restrictive definitions, it might be best to look for three elements that embrace intercultural similarity and community specificity: (1) Agents consistently alter consciousness; (2) these altered states are accepted as important ritual practices by the agent’s community; and (3) knowledge concerning altered consciousness is controlled as a way of seeing to it that certain socially sanctioned practices are carried out. Such nuanced consideration is also essential when considering art. Recognizing art as a concept created during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, Mary Staniszewski (1995) argued the term should not be applied before this period, to such imagery as Paleolithic “Venus” figurines and Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. Janet Wolff (1981) had already suggested that the production and consumption of specific visual cultures can only be understood when examined in their social contexts. Drawing on both approaches, it seems reasonable to retain the term art when examining non-Western visual imagery, since like the generic shaman it has currency, so long as (1) it is clear that it is not a fixed, nonnegotiable,
value-free term, (2) indigenous art is not directly compared with Western art, and (3) the “art” in question is examined in its specific social context.
With the terms shamanism and art recognized as problematic and approaches to them developed, it becomes reasonable to consider the four principle disciplines that have proposed links between shamanism and art: anthropology, archaeology, art history, and psychology. In brief, then: Anthropologists in general have debated the value of applying the Western concept of art cross-culturally to shamanic visual culture and have developed methodologies for exploring local indigenous aesthetics. Archaeologists have proposed sophisticated methodologies that suggest that certain elements of rock art imagery (e.g., some European Paleolithic cave art, some Southern African rock engravings and paintings) and other material culture derive from the altered states of consciousness entered into by shamans. A variety of artists in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have called themselves shamans, or their work has been interpreted by scholars as “shamanic.” Linking the interests of these three groups, via the perceived commonality of the human central nervous system and/or psychological interpretations of “mind,” psychologists have referred to the art of mentally ill patients as shamanic. Clearly shamanic art has a wide variety of meanings to different people, so wide perhaps that the value of the term could be questioned. Nevertheless, it seems worthwhile to provide more detailed accounts of how these four disciplines have approached shamans and art, with reference to specific examples of perceived shamanic arts, in order to bring out the value of each approach to an understanding of both shamans and art.
Anthropology
Anthropologists have pointed out that the application of the terms art and aesthetics is problematic outside the occident (e.g., Gell 1998). In elucidating the meanings of imagery to the specific communities that produce and consume it, anthropologists often have the advantage of being able to ask the people themselves. In the context of shamanic art, ethnographic records suggest that the visual imagery is often a direct depiction of shamanic experiences. For
the Huichol (who call themselves Wixarika) in Mexico, for example, yarn paintings produced by applying brightly colored woolen threads to beeswax “canvases” portray the intense visions of the Mara’akame (Schaeffer and Furst 1996). According to the elements common to various shamanisms defined above, the Mara’akame are shamans: (1) they induce altered consciousness by ingesting the cactus peyote; (2) such ritual practices are supported by the community— the role of the Mara’akame is central to community life; and (3) the Mara’akame engage with the spirit world in order to perform essential community-related tasks; in particular the peyote enables them to “see with their hearts,” promoting social well-being and cohesion.
The bright colors and kaleidoscopic shapes in the yarn paintings are a reflection of their origins in altered consciousness. Based on their formal properties alone—the tools of the traditional art historian—the meaning of Huichol yarn painting imagery is elusive. Only awareness of Hui-chol cosmology makes it possible to understand why Huichol artists might portray, for example, two hunters shooting a cactus. On the sacred thousand-mile pilgrimage to the land of Wirikuta (in the north-central desert of Mexico) where the Mara’akame harvest peyote, all social conventions are reversed: Men become women, for example, the young become old, and the peyote cactus becomes a deer. When collecting the cactus, the Mara’akame “hunt” the deer, firing “prayer arrows” into the plant. It is now clear why some yarn paintings portray the hunters and cactus as they do: The art is a literal depiction of the Mara’akame “hunting” the deer/pey-ote in Wirikuta. Where the traditional methods of art history might examine formal properties and aesthetics alone at the expense of indigenous understandings, approaching Huichol yarn paintings as shamanic art in a specific socioreligious context makes it possible to understand the complex meaning of the imagery.
Since Huichol art works so well as an example with which to argue against the institutionalized concept of art, it is ironic that Huichol art has entered the Western-motivated dealercritic system: Yarn paintings by famous Hui-chol artists fetch high prices on the unfortunately named “primitive” art market. In fact, anthropology itself has turned to this arena, the “traffic in [visual] culture” (Marcus and Myers 1995), as a fertile area for research, not only for
Embroidered artwork of the Huichol Indians, bright with colors and symbols. January 1982. (Morton Beebe/Corbis)
understanding how the Huichol and other indigenous communities in similar situations (indigenous art is hot property across the world) are adapting actively to these circumstances, but also for better understanding the ways (post)modern Westerners are implicated in processes of neocolonialism (see, e.g., papers in MacClancy 1997). Contemporary art historians are also interested in how the dealer-critic coterie reifies canonical approaches to art (selling indigenous art as “Art,” for instance), since it has developed a more self-reflective understanding of art, one that takes into account postmodern theory (e.g., Hides 1996). Although the anthropological example of the Huichol demonstrates that approaching some indigenous art as shamanic is valid, applying the terms shamanism and art to archaeological data is more controversial.
Archaeology
Use of the term shamanism in discussions of archaeological art is not new: The stereotypical shaman Other, whose practices are perceived as
the origins of religion, is singled out as the “artist” of that classic Other archaeological art perceived as the origins of “art”—Cave Art. Cursory references to shamanism are all too frequent in archaeological literature: In G. Speake’s analysis of raptors in Anglo-Saxon “animal art,” for instance, he observed that “the interpretation must be that the birds represent the mind of Odin as seer or shaman” (Speake 1980, 82). This liberal, off-the-cuff use of the term shaman strips shamans, art, and the material culture in question of context. To provide more than cursory comments, one must embed shamanistic interpretations of archaeological art in specific, local, community contexts. (The term “shamanistic,” used here in connection with archaeological findings, indicates that our interpretation of such art can be even more tentative than more recent—and verifiable—examples of “shamanic” art.) Such an approach, aided by ethnographic analogy and neuropsychological research, has produced sophisticated interpretations of rock art.
Interpretations of rock art traditions worldwide have been diverse: Rock art has been understood as art for art’s sake, as information storage, and as hunting magic. Contemporary researchers tend to agree that many of these interpretations have been Western constructions and problematized insufficiently to be of value. Over the last fifteen years, however, theorizing of the approach that sees rock art as shamanistic has made an important contribution to rock art research. Southern African rock art researchers (e.g., Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1999), have reexamined rock art imagery in the region in light of ethnographic documents from the nineteenth century and anthropological records since the 1950s, both of which record the lifeways of the San (Bushmen). Central to the community life of the contemporary San and likely also to the life of their ancestors who produced the rock art is the trance, or healing dance, in which shamans alter consciousness by means of dancing, hyperventilation, and the auditory driving of monotonous clapping and singing (e.g., Katz, Biesele, and St. Denis 1997).
The altered consciousness San shamans induce is felt as a painful boiling energy called n|om (or n|um) at the base of the spine; it is considered a supernatural potency, and it rises up the spine as it increases in intensity until shamans collapse in a trance, called !aia (or
San (Bushman) rock painting, Southern Africa, interpreted as a depiction of trance dancing. (Courtesy of Thomas Dowson)
!kia). To the Western observer, the shaman appears unconscious, often sweating profusely and bleeding from the nose, such is the intensity of the experience. Other shamans revive trancing shamans by rubbing them vigorously with their own sweat (said to contain n|om), and sweat is used similarly to heal the sick—sickness that, from the anthropologist’s point of view, may be physical or social. Hence the trance dance facilitates community healing and is central to community life. After the dance, shamans have described how !aia was rather different from unconsciousness: Out-of-body experiences in the spirit world have been reported, during which shamans may journey over the veldt in search of game, remove arrows of sickness from the sick, and encounter spirit helpers in the form of birds and animals. It is precisely these shamanistic aspects of San lifeways that are depicted in some Southern African rock art.
One painting, for example, is most likely a literal depiction of a trance dance: A number of human figures are dancing around two central figures, leaving a circular furrow in the desert sand. Some of the dancing figures have their arms raised upwards or are bent over in postures like the trance postures San shamans adopt in the Kalahari today. At the center of the group appears to be a shaman laying his or her hands on a prone patient. A single arrow is
juxtaposed with these figures and the arrows on the outside of the group: There is little in this imagery to suggest we are dealing with real arrows or hunting magic here; rather, the arrows are likely arrows of sickness—perhaps one of these has been removed from the prone figure and expelled by the shaman. But the meaning of arrows is not exhausted by a single interpretation: San shamans describe somatic trance experiences, such as the sensation of prickly skin, as being pierced by arrows. Other shamanic experiences of San shamans are depicted in a painting showing a figure with arms that are depicted as two wavy lines and that end in fish tails, enigmatic features that may be explained by the juxtaposition of the figure with fish. Entering the spirit world is described by the San as a death, and, in one account, as a drowning (Old K’xau, reported in Halifax 1979, 55—56). Perhaps the fish here, then, and the wavy arms terminating in fish tails, are a metaphorical reference to the feeling of submerging into the spirit world, being underwater, or even drowning. Shamans also describe experiences of floating, flight, and out-of-body travel while in the spirit world, so the image of a bird may also be a metaphor for these experiences. Alternatively, the birds and fish depicted here may be examples of the spirit helpers San shamans encounter while in the spirit world.
With a strong case for shamanistic interpretations of Southern African rock art, David Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson (1988), noting like many before them the similarities between San rock art and the polychrome cave paintings of Upper Paleolithic Europe, propose a neuropsychological model for interpreting cave art. These authors suggest that specific (though not all) geometric shapes found in some rock art may be derived from the entoptic (within the eye) phenomena reported by indigenous shamans and Western subjects of neuropsychological experiments on altered consciousness. They argue that the commonality of the human central nervous system and entoptics derived therefrom might account for similar trance-induced images being depicted in a variety of shamanic arts worldwide; hence the similarities between them. These suggestions have been much contested, all the more so since a number of rock art scholars have gotten on the entoptics bandwagon and interpreted rock art traditions they are studying as
San (Bushman) rock painting, Southern Africa: the human figure with arms that end in fishtails may depict a shaman expressing the “underwater metaphor” for altered conscious experiences. (Courtesy of Thomas Dowson)
shamanic just because of the presence of geometric, entoptic-like images. Proponents of the shamanistic approach (i.e., those scholars who find these shamanic interpretations not sufficiently verifiable) have argued against such laissez-faire applications of the neuropsychological model, pointing out that only specific geometric forms should be recognized as entoptics and that the identification of entoptics is only one part of the model—those searching for entoptics alone have neglected to apply the neuropsychological model in its entirety, thus overlooking the diversity of rock art and shamans. (For a critical review of the debate, see Wallis 2002.) With these concerns addressed, the shamanistic (that is, the more conservative) approach has been refined and developed into a sophisticated methodology for examining shamanistic art, and scholars are acknowledging its value for understanding some rock art traditions, as well as other aspects of visual culture.
Modern Art
As discussed above, the eighteenth century was formative in the development of the terms
shamanism and art, and perceived links between the two derive from this time. The concept of the artist as a divinely inspired but penniless genius subsisting on the fringes of society is not a world away from the concept of the shaman as a social misfit, an inspired or mad (or both) ecstatic priest plagued by “artistic” visions. Even though both concepts are misleading fabrications, and neither applies consistently across cultures, the stereotypes have endured. The link between shamans and art intensifies and is solidified in the context of modern art in the twentieth century. The poet Jerome Rothenberg has claimed that various romantic and visionary poets, including Rainer Maria Rilke, Arthur Rimbaud, and the Dadaists, all represented “Neo-Shamanisms” (cited in Wallis 2003, 26). Certainly, modern artists have drawn on the Western magical tradition (if not shamanism) to inspire their art, with works by Marc Chagall (1887—1985) and Vasily Kandinsky (1866— 1944), for example, influenced by occultism, mysticism, and folklore. Kandinsky himself regarded the artist as a shaman, as, more recently, did Joseph Beuys (1921—1986).
The tribute to Beuys in the Tate Modern Art Gallery (South Bank, London) states he “was no ordinary sculptor. He was also a shaman” (“Bits and Pieces” collection display in the Landscape/Matter/Environment gallery, 2002). Beuys himself claimed that everybody is an artist, a concept that Beuys’s biographer, Caroline Tisdall, in a conversation with the author of this entry, agreed may also imply that everybody is a shaman. Beuys has been termed a shaman for a number of reasons. He claimed that after the Stuka plane in which he was radio operator crashed in the inhospitable conditions of the Crimea during World War II, he was rescued by Tartars who revived him, badly burnt and freezing, with fat and felt insulation. These substances became a primary inspiration for his work: wrapping himself in felt for hours at a time, for instance, and wearing a felt trilby hat, which he always termed shamanic, during the performance of Coyote. He viewed felt and fat as alchemical substances, felt being both an insulator and a filter, and fat being an insulator with a unique state that fluctuates between solid and liquid.
Beuys regarded the plane crash as an initiatory experience, likening it to a death and rebirth, and he also endured a long-lasting break
down, which he viewed as a rite of passage essential to being an artist. Beuys’s words, “Show your wound,” espoused the view that vulnerability is the secret of being an artist, the term “wound” here perhaps alluding to the indigenous shaman as a “wounded healer.” Many of Beuys’s paintings are entitled Shaman, and the techniques he employed to produce the drawings entitled Coyote, as well as the performance of Coyote itself (New York 1974), were certainly mimetic of shamanic consciousness-altering practices: Sometimes wrapped in an enormous piece of felt, wearing the trilby and an old pair of boots (later renamed “sulphur [another alchemical substance] boots”), and wielding a cane walking stick, which he perceived as a conductor of energy, Beuys spent three days in a room caged with a live coyote, accompanied by a tape recording of chaotic turbine sounds.
To apply Dowson’s elements of shamanisms to Beuys and other modern artists to elucidate whether or not they were or are shamans is to miss the point. Not only is applying a term suited to indigenous contexts to modern Westerners anachronistic, it is more significant to consider the sociopolitical implications of the artists themselves using the term (as in the case of Beuys) or art historians and others applying the term to them (as in the case of Chagall). In both cases the use of the term associates certain “mystical” meanings or abilities with the individual concerned; connections made between artists and shamans imply that they have in common a “divine madness.” In both cases, the process of comparison is part of a wider historic trend: As had happened in previous centuries, the shaman in the twentieth century was relegated to the realm of the bohemian artist.
This is not to say that appropriations of shamanisms by artists and art historians and critics are without value entirely. Beuys used art and his understanding of shamans to challenge the art world’s elitist dealer-critic system: In Beuys’s worldview, archaeology, the everyday (in a similar vein as Duchamp’s readymades), and shamanism (particularly healing of nature, individual, society, and planet) are embraced by the term art. Beuys’s use of shamanism in his art was self-empowering on the one hand, and a potent postmodern critique of modernity on the other. To avoid anachronism then, rather than call Beuys a shaman, one might more accurately term him a neo-Shaman.
A number of other modern artists may also be approached as neo-Shamans, as they utilize shaman-like techniques in the production of their work. Austin Osman Spare’s (1887—1956) idiosyncratic system of atavistic resurgence incorporated sexual excitation and orgasm combined with will and image in a technique of ecstasy. He encountered spirit familiars (well known to shamans); he made automatic, or trance, drawings of them; and the Native American spirit “Black Eagle” was a major source of Spare’s ecstatic inspiration. Similar shamanic other-than-human-helpers are evident in the artwork of Australian witch Ros-aleen Norton (1917-1979). To term these artists neo-Shamans is not to construct a generalizing metanarrative across cultures, which neglects diversity and difference (whether differences between different artists, shamans, or human beings); it is rather to suggest that our understanding of these artists and their work is advanced by seeing them in relation to NeoShamanism.
Artists such as Beuys, Spare, and Norton differ significantly from indigenous shamans, particularly in terms of sociocultural context, but the boundary between shaman and neo-Shaman is more permeable in other instances. Some Western practitioners involve themselves in the revival of shamanisms in indigenous contexts, for example, as Michael Harner has done in his Foundation for Shamanic Studies in Siberia (Wallis 2003). Some indigenous shamans adapt their practices to the global village, as Peruvian shamans have done in adopting Catholic saints as spirit helpers. And some Sakha artists in Siberia have, in this post-Soviet era, reconceptualized shamans in their art as positive, though they were once perceived negatively. In these instances, any rigid boundaries between shamans and neo-Shamans perceived by academics are disrupted.
Psychology
The perceived divine madness link between artists and shamans was intensified in the twentieth century with the emergence and popular consumption of psychology, which has played a significant role in the discernment of relationships between altered consciousness, shamans, art, and mental illness. In the first half of the twentieth century, shamans were defined as
psychotics (e.g., Kroeber 1940), a perception that was revised from the 1960s toward the opposite extreme of seeing shamans as adept psychiatrists (Groesbeck 1989). In either case, the debate concerns concepts of mind, madness, and consciousness, as well as the question of whether the similarity of the imagery some artists, mentally ill patients, and shamans produce is due to the fact that all possess a human central nervous system or to Jung’s “collective unconscious.” The images produced by patients undergoing art therapy, particularly the images created by schizophrenics, have been likened to the “hallucinatory” imagery of art produced by indigenous shamans, as well as to images produced by artists such as Kandinsky, founder of “pure” abstract art and the German expressionist movement.
Since Mircea Eliade and other scholars of shamanism decontextualised and universalized shamans, and where traditional art historians have promoted a similar transcendental and homogenous approach to “art” across cultures, in order to do justice to shamans, artists, and shaman or neo-Shaman artists, it is now vital to examine them as individuals, case by case, to tease out diversity and nuance. Thus psychological approaches to shamans, artists, and the mentally ill that foreground similarity at the expense of difference are problematic. It may be argued that the human central nervous system is a biological given, whereas the existence of Jung’s collective unconscious is debatable, but the real question is how much these psychological approaches contribute positively to our understanding of shamanic art. The notion of entoptic imagery derived from neuropsychological research and applied in the shamanic interpretation of rock art is controversial, yet proponents of the research have developed an approach that acknowledges similarity (i.e., the commonality of the human central nervous system, altered consciousness, and entoptics derived therefrom) but foregrounds diversity (i.e., ways in which these visual percepts are interpreted in rock art imagery according to cultural differences). Jungian analysis of indigenous, prehistoric, schizophrenic, and modern art, however, tends to explain similarity in a sweeping metanarrative (e.g., Tucker 1992), precisely the kind of approach anthropologists, archaeologists, and others in cultural studies have deconstructed,
accusing it of being peculiarly Western in its simplicity and insensitivity.
The essential point is that, whether researchers explore “shamanic art” in indigenous and prehistoric contexts or in the modern West, it is vital to be sensitive to social specificity and diversity. In the modern West, it would be well to approach shaman-artists as neo-Shamans, so as to be sensitive to indigenous shamans past and present and to recognize the sociopolitical contexts and implications of calling oneself a shaman in the West. With such precautions, which involve using the terms shamanism and art critically and sensitively, the notion of “shamanic art” can be useful.
Robert J. Wallis
See also: Archaeology of Shamanism; Core Shamanism and Neo-Shamanism; Costume, Shaman; Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Shamans; Entoptic Images; Huichol Shamanism; Neuropsychology of Shamanism; Psychology of Shamanism; Rock Art and Shamanism
References and further reading:
Dowson, Thomas A. 1999. “Rock Art and
Shamanism: A Methodological Impasse.” Pp.
39—56 in Rock Art, Shamanism and Central Asia: Discussions of Relations. Edited by Andrzej Rozwadowski, Maria M. Kosko and Thomas A. Dowson. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Academickie (in Polish with English summary).
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Groesbeck, C. J. 1989. “C. G. Jung and the Shaman’s Vision.” Journal of Analytical Psychology 34(3): 255-275.
Halifax, Joan. 1979. Shamanic Voices: A Survey of Visionary Narratives. New York: Arkana.
Harvey, Graham. 2002. Shamanism: A Reader.
London: Routledge.
Hides, S. 1996. “’Other’ Art: Approaching Non-European Cultures.” In Guide to Art. Edited by S. West. London: Bloomsbury Press.
Hutton, Ronald. 2002. Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination. London: Hambledon.
Katz, Richard, Megan Biesele, and Verna St. Denis. 1997. Healing Makes Our Hearts Happy: Spirituality and Cultural Transformation among the Kalahari Ju|’hoansi. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International.
Kroeber, Alfred L. 1940. “Psychotic Factors in Shamanism.” Character and Personality 8: 204-215.
Lewis-Williams, David, and Thomas A. Dowson. 1988. “The Signs of All Times: Entoptic Phenomena in Upper Paleolithic Art.” Current Anthropology 29, no. 2: 201-245.
Lewis-Williams, David, and Thomas A. Dowson. 1999 [1989]. Images of Power: Understanding Bushman Rock Art. Johannesburg: Southern Book Publishers.
MacClancy, Jeremy, ed. 1997. Contesting Art: Art, Politics and Identity in the Modern World.
Oxford: Berg.
Marcus, George E., and F. R. Myers, eds. 1995. The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Narby, Jeremy, and Francis Huxley, eds. 2001.
Shamans Through Time: 500 Years on the Path to Knowledge. London: Thames and Hudson.
Schaeffer, Stacy B., and Peter T. Furst, eds. 1996.
People of the Peyote: Huichol Indian Story, Religion, and Survival. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Speake, G. 1980. Anglo-Saxon Animal Art and its Germanic Background. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Staniszewski, Mary A. 1995. Believing Is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art. New York: Penguin Books.
Tucker, Michael. 1992. Dreaming With Open Eyes: The Shamanic Spirit in Contemporary Art and Culture. London: Harper Collins.
Wallis, Robert J. 2002. “The Bwili or ’Flying Tricksters’ of Malakula: A Critical Discussion of Recent Debates on Rock Art, Ethnography and Shamanisms.” Journal of The Royal Anthropological Institute 8(4): 753-778.
Wallis, Robert J. 2003. Shamans/neo-Shamans: Ecstasy, Alternative Archaeologies and Contemporary Pagans. London: Routledge.
Wolff, Janet. 1981. The Social Production of Art. London: Macmillan.
BIOENERGETIC HEALING
In New Age parlance, bioenergetics refers to certain forms of therapy, including the therapy specifically called bioenergetics; Reiki; and chakra, distance, and aura healing. These therapies deal with natural but invisible energies flowing around the human body through numerous channels, or meridians (e.g., Nudel and Nudel 2000; Oschman and Pert 2000). Complementary therapies such as acupuncture and reflexology, which also explain their healing effects by energy channels, are comparable, although “bio-energy healing” deals more specifically with noncontact techniques. The term bio-energy is used in both instances to lend an air of scientific authenticity to complementary healing techniques that are not based on Western medical science. Much jargon-laden literature exists on the subject, fusing the language of the New Age, quantum physics, and Eastern mysticism, but that does not necessarily mean that the techniques do not have healing effects. Bio-energy healers claim that the physical bodies of humans, animals, and plants contain and are surrounded by electromagnetic, or bioenergetic, fields. These energies are polarized into positive and negative bio-energies and when flowing harmonically through the body, both positive and negative forces are balanced—the body is in good health. These energy fields are in constant communication with one another through the body’s network of energy channels, known variously as meridians, power centers, energetic transformers, or chakras (a frequently used term from Hindu philosophy). At times of physical or mental stress and illness, one or more of the channels may become blocked, and the bio-energy there stagnates.
It is the task of the bio-energy healer to unblock these areas, free the flow of bio-energy, and restore the body to a state of balance. Bio
energy healers also attempt to maintain the harmonic flow of bio-energy in healthy bodies, so as to prevent and avoid imbalance. Bio-energy healers suggest that all humans have an intuitive ability to sense and affect the bio-energy field with their hands and mind, but certain gifted individuals stand out as exceptionally able. Both practitioners and patients make big claims for the power of bio-energy healing, which is said to be able to relieve such conditions as asthma, prostate cancer, multiple sclerosis, and even infertility. It is not necessary for the healer to be present in order to effect a healing, since energy healing from a distance and healing using a photograph are also possible.
Practitioners of bioenergetics may claim their techniques, as a form of holistic natural healing, are ancient and traditional, but there is no evidence to link bioenergetics to indigenous shamanistic techniques. Although the engagement of shamans and neo-Shamans in postmodernity has led to certain New Age techniques (as in, e.g., Michael Harner’s Core Shamanism) passing into indigenous shamanic knowledge systems, the manipulation of hidden or invisible energies of the body without contact with the body is not a significant feature of traditional shamanisms.
Indigenous shamans consistently use the spirit journey to seek out sources of illness and may battle with evil spirits, and sometimes remove spirits from a patient’s body, in order to effect a cure. This approach to healing is particularly prevalent in Siberia, where the term shaman originates (e.g., Hutton 2001), but it is also found in such geographically distant areas as the Arctic and South America, where shamans may extract the spirit causing the illness by, for example, sucking through a tube placed on the skin (e.g., Harner 1990). In both of these instances, the shaman considers the
spirit-illness to be a foreign body in the patient, not a blockage of natural energies, as is the case with bioenergetics. A closer analogy to bioenergetics in an indigenous context might be San (Bushman) shamanism in southern Africa. San shamans sweat profusely while performing a trance dance, and this sweat is perceived to contain supernatural potency, so shamans rub the sweat vigorously onto their patients in order to effect healing (e.g., Katz 1982). Even in this instance, however, San shamans believe they are introducing healing substances from outside, rather than balancing naturally occurring energies within the patient.
Robert J. Wallis
See also: Core Shamanism and Neo
Shamanism; Healing and Shamanism
References and further reading:
Green, Rayna. 1988. “The Tribe Called
Wannabee.” Folklore 99, no. 1: 30—55.
Harner, Michael. 1990. The Way of the Shaman. 3d ed. London: Harper Collins.
Hutton, Ronald. 2001. Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination. London and New York: Hambledon.
Katz, Richard. 1982. Boiling Energy: Community Healing among the Kalahari !Kung. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Nudel, Michael, and Eva Nudel. 2000. Health by Bio-Energy and Mind. Los Angeles: BioEnergy System Services.
Oschman, James, and Candace Pert. 2000.
Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis. London: Churchill Livingstone.
Wallis, Robert J. 2003. Shamans/Neo-Shamans: Ecstasy, Alternative Archaeologies and Contemporary Pagans. London: Routledge.
BUDDHISM AND SHAMANISM
It is easier to explicate why shamanism is a widespread practice in Buddhist societies if common misconceptions about the Buddhist tradition are dispelled. Although Buddhism is often called an atheistic religion, it is atheistic only in the sense that it is not based on belief in an omniscient and omnipotent God; in fact, as a look at the “wheel of life” showing the different domains of rebirth will easily demon
strate, Buddhists believe that gods, demons, ghosts, and many other spirits exist, that they reside in heavens and purgatories, and that most supernatural beings can inhabit the human realm, affecting individuals. Further, although Buddhist texts counsel elite monks and nuns to ignore all of these beings, since they are irrelevant to the search for nirvana, it is important to understand that the great majority of Buddhists in every Asian community have been householders (secular people) who have not pursued nirvana, but whose main interests have been acquiring merit for a better rebirth, and using the resources of Buddhism and other cultural traditions to secure health, success, and prosperity. Though the canonical texts were written by monks and definitely focused predominantly on the monastic minority, there are canonical passages that make this division of spiritual concerns clear. The Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism conveys this division clearly, when the Buddha instructs the good Buddhist householder to seek “The Four Conditions”:
Housefather, there are these four conditions which are desirable, dear, delightful, hard to win in the world. Which four? . . .
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[1] Wealth being gotten by lawful means . . .
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[2] Good report gotten by me along with my kinsmen and teacher
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[3] Long life and attain a great age . . .
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[4] When the body breaks up, on the other side of death may I attain happy birth, the heaven world!
The text then proceeds to specify how the moral and wealthy Buddhist householder should attain these goals by doing the “The Four Good Deeds”:
Now, housefather, that same Aryan disciple, with the wealth acquired by energetic striving . . ., is the doer of four deeds. What are the four?
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[1] [He] makes himself happy and cheerful, he is a contriver of perfect happiness; he makes his mother and father, his children and wife, his servants and workmen, his friends and comrades cheerful and happy. This . . . is the first opportunity seized by him, turned to merit and fittingly made use of.
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[2] Then again, the . . . disciple . . . with that wealth makes himself secure against all misfortunes whatsoever, such as may happen by way of fire, water, the king, a robber, an ill-disposed person . . . He takes steps for his defense and makes himself secure. ..
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[3] Then again . . . the disciple . . . is a maker of the five-fold offering (bali), namely: to relatives, to guests, to departed hungry ghosts, to the king, and to the gods (devatG)...
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[4] Then again, the . . . disciple . . . offers gifts to all such recluses and brahmins . . . who tame the one self,... to such he offers a gift which has the highest result . . . resulting in happiness and leading to heaven.
(Anguttara Nika-ya IV, VII, 61; Hare 1992, 75-76)
Thus, the good Buddhist householder is instructed to foster family ties, engage in “energetic striving” after economic success, and worship hungry ghosts and local gods, seeking justly earned worldly happiness and security (Powers 1995).
The pragmatic conception of the Buddha’s teachings (the dharma), however nuanced in every local community, shaped the domestication of Buddhism from Sri Lanka to the Himalayas, from Central Asia to Japan. To focus only on texts designated to guide the rare meditation master or philosopher is to miss the center of Buddhism in society and the rationale for Buddhists enthusiastically supporting shamans.
The canonical texts clearly indicate that Buddhists should understand not only that gods, ghosts, and demons exist, but that they should also be taken seriously, as they can cause suffering through their powers to influence the natural world, spread disease, and foment misfortune. Thus, the understandings of the power of the gods and spirits from early South Asia were extended to other parts of Asia, though the spirits themselves often differed. In many localities where Buddhism flourished, the monastic leaders had no basis for objecting to indigenous shamanic traditions whose aim was to contact the great gods, local deities, or ancestral spirits. The only basis for conflict was the practice of
animal sacrifice associated with such cults, an issue that will be discussed below.
The most dangerous spirits have been thought capable of possessing individuals, causing the body’s essential elements to become unbalanced or the individual’s consciousness to become deranged, even to leave the body. In addition to indigenous curative practices, the first Buddhist rituals were designed to protect individuals and communities from these and other dangers, primarily through the repetition of special words (called mantras, paritta, or raksha) bestowed by the Buddha for this purpose.
Since there was no universally acknowledged institutional locus of orthodoxy or orthopraxy in the history of Buddhism, and since adapting to local societies and cultures was encouraged from the very beginnings of this missionary faith, Buddhists creatively melded their traditions with local practices. Monastic leaders across Asia skillfully balanced their general doctrinal norms with a great variety of cultural understandings about deities, illness, and methods of healing. Acceptance of and support for shamanistic practices by Buddhist householders should therefore not be surprising.
Whatever the accommodations, however, there was no compromising with the universal Buddhist notion that the Buddha is the greatest being in the cosmos, that all deities are subject to karmic law and hence are inferior to the Buddha and Buddhist saints, and that Buddhist moral law must take precedence over local ritual practices, especially in the realm of animal sacrifices. Thus, shamanic traditions have ex-isted—and in places thrived—where Buddhism has been the dominant culture, though their ritual practices have commonly been adapted to respect Buddhist ethics.
As for Buddhist monks, the two branches of Buddhism, TheravGda and MahGyGna, differ significantly in distancing the monastery and monastic practice from shamanic practices. In the South and Southeast Asian culture regions, there have been a number of studies of Thera-vada tradition and the wider religious contexts in which it has existed that have included a study of shamanic elements. Shamanism in Sri Lanka illustrates the “southern school’s” pattern of accommodation: A host of dancing and drumming exorcisms are still conducted by troupes (kattiya) of typically low-caste exorcism specialists (adura), who remove the influences
of hostile ghosts or demons from sick Buddhist patients. Thought to act capriciously and often without warning, specific demons are believed to cause specific illnesses, some potentially fatal. The five greatest exorcistic rites are similar in many respects: The chief exorcist goes into trance to divine the cause of illness; for the ritual, he (and others in the troupe) wear the demon-specific masks or makeup, enter the trance state to channel the demon’s presence, then confront the patient, eliciting the family’s and community’s protective response; finally, the shaman plays out having the demon’s malevolent presence removed by invoking the law of the Buddha. These nightlong rituals “define the character of demonic attack, and fill out and outwardly objectify the nature of the patient’s subjective experience as this is culturally constructed. The movement of a patient from a condition of demonic control to a condition freed from the power of demons is presented and validated in the order of the performance” (Kapferer 1983, 60).
Buddhist monks have no involvement in these shamanic events, and in the strict interpretation of the monastic code should not even witness them. However, it is the Buddha’s law, the dharma—through both its supernatural spoken power and its definition of cosmic or-der—that is ultimately invoked to establish the final triumph of humanity over demonic control. As illustrated in the climax of the Sanni Yakuma, an exorcism rite ridding a patient of the eighteen illness demons, the chief of these evil forces, the frightening Kola Suniya, is made to depart, forced to read the long-accepted varan (warrant) of the Buddha: “The Great Lord, Our Buddha says, according to this letter of authority . . . [to] give this mean ancestral spirit, this mean one, seven bags of rice and seven bags of food, burn him with the rays of the Buddha, chase him beyond the seven villages, beyond the seven boundaries. All the misfortunes, upset humors are over” (Obeye-sekere 1969, 196).
Quite different were the Indo-Tibetan vaj-raya-na traditions of MahGyGna Buddhism. Here, spiritual masters of tantra (called siddhas or vajra-ca-ryas) adopted spiritual practices that incorporated shamanic elements while retaining the ancient Buddhist purpose of reaching enlightenment. The tantric meditative practice of sa-dhana involves practitioners “seizing the
divine ego”; through mantra incantations, mu-dra hand gestures, drumming, and visualization, this sGdhana practice invites the enlightened divinity to merge with the siddha and so impart both enlightenment and blessings to the practitioner.
Masters of the tantric spiritual tradition are expected to serve as bodhisattvas, dedicating their accomplished practice of channeling the divine Buddhist presence to serve others. The substances offered in carefully choreographed tantric rituals are imbued with the enlightened being’s power and grace; gathered at the end, this prasa-d is a vessel of blessings that is consumed by the master’s community of disciples. All schools of Tibetan Buddhism, Newar Buddhist vajrGcGryas in Nepal, as well as the priests of the Shingon school of Japan, all adopted these spiritual practices and rituals that applied the master’s powers to compassionately serve others.
Tantric ritualism also was integral to Chinese MahGyGna Buddhism. Monks applied this ritual technology and control over the enlightened divinities to perform rites to satisfy the departed ancestors who were thought possibly to be reborn as pretas (hungry ghosts). In China, these hungry ghosts were regarded as more dangerous than in India, where the early conception was that pretas were too consumed with their own suffering to harm others. But in China, as a marker of filial piety to the departed ancestors, monks perform tantric rituals to make merit for themselves and the dead, while seeking to insure the best possible afterlife destiny for their relatives. In the five-hour evening rite called the fang yen-k’ou (release of the burning mouths), monk ritualists seek to draw upon the powers of the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha to break through the gates of purgatory, open the throats of the suffering pretas, and feed them mantra-imbued water, making rebirth as a human being or in a paradise inevitable (Welch 1973, 186—187).
There were also tantric practitioners across the MahGyGna culture area who were famous for their ability to exorcise spirits from the afflicted using tantric amulets, prasGd, and ritual implements that are placed in contact with the body. Buddhist monastic healers were sought based upon their individual charisma and the record of their cures. These practices were regarded as praiseworthy, since healing is a direct
act of compassion and consistent with the bodhisattva monk’s vow to help others while pursuing enlightenment. Although it is difficult to ascertain whether the Indic origins of these tantric practices were Buddhist or non-Bud-dhist, there is no doubt that later Buddhists in the MahGyGna communities pursued them, in part, to offer a Buddhist healing practice, one that in places had to compete with indigenous shamanic curing traditions.
Such rivalry between Buddhist monks and shamans has been especially highlighted by recent studies of religion in the Himalayan region. Stan Mumford (1989) studied refugee Tibetan Buddhists of the Nyingma-pa school and the shamanic traditions among the Gu-rungs, a Tibeto-Burman ethnic group of the central Himalayas that had also adopted Buddhist traditions from the north several centuries ago. He shows how the traditions of Buddhism and shamanism overlap in many respects (exorcism, healing, worshipping the local deities), at times competing for support by the local merchants and farmers. In an ongoing cultural dialogue—one that likely was entered into by many who converted to Buddhism across Asia over the millennia—the Gurungs straddled these traditions, adopting to some extent Buddhist beliefs in consciousness and rebirth, yet unwilling to abandon their ancestral practice of having shamans perform “guiding the soul” rites after death and worshipping the local deities with an annual animal sacrifice. It is not the shamanic practice per se that caused conflict between these specialists, but the shaman-led annual sacrifice of a captured deer to the local deities. From the Buddhist perspective, killing an animal is like killing one’s parents; from the shamanic perspective widely accepted by the villagers, if the mountain guardian deities do not receive their annual “red offering” indicating the villagers’ gratitude, the rains will not fall and their life will become impossible.
Geoffrey Samuel (1993) has provided an interpretation of tantric Buddhism that helps to explain the distinctive features of the Tibetan tradition, distinguishing clerical monastic Buddhism from what he terms Shamanic Buddhism: “Vajrayana Buddhism as practiced in Tibet may be described as shamanic, in that it is centered around communication with an alternative mode of reality via the alternative
states of consciousness of Tantric Yoga” (Samuel 1993, 8). In effect, the tantric monks of Tibet function as shamans, utilizing the practices and techniques of tantric Buddhism: A few utilize these methods for pursuing enlightenment; most do so to serve the pragmatic needs of the householder majority. In Tibetan Buddhism, then, both the shamanic-tantric approach (visionary, involving oral instructions from teacher) and the clerical monastic approach (discipline-bound, textually derived meditation) have been woven closely into the fabric of religious life, with the scholastic monastics such as the Gelug-pa Tsongk’apa (1357—1419) developing theories to reconcile the clerical and shamanic modalities.
Todd Lewis
See also: Burmese Spirit Lords and Their Mediums; Buryat Shamanism; Funeral Rites in Eurasian Shamanism; Japanese Shamanism; Kalmyk Shamanic Healing Practices; Ladakhi Shamans and Oracles; Manchu Shamanism; Mountain Priests— Shugendo; Priestesses of Sri Lanka; South Asian Shamanism; Southeast Asian Shamanism; Spirits and Ghosts in Mongolia; Tantrism and Shamanism; Tibetan Shamanism; Yellow Shamans
References and further reading:
Bimala Churn Law. 1974. The Buddhist
Conception of Spirits. Varanasi: Bhartiya Publishing House.
Hare, E. M., trans. 1992 [1933]. The Book of Gradual Sayings [Anguttara Nika-ya]. Vol. 2. Oxford, UK: Pali Text Society.
Kapferer, Bruce. 1983. A Celebration of Demons: Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri Lanka. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Miller, Casper. 1979. Faith-Healers in the Himalayas. Kathmandu: Center for Nepal and Asian Studies.
Mumford, Stan. 1989. Himalayan Dialog: Tibetan Lamas and Gurung Shamans in Nepal. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Rene de. 1956.Oracles and Demons of Tibet: The Cult and Iconography of Tibetan Protective Deities. The Hague: Mouton.
Obeyesekere, G. 1969. “The Ritual Drama of the Sanni Demons.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 11: 174—197.
34 buddhism and shamanism
Powers, John. 1995. Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications.
Samuel, Geoffrey. 1993. Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Spiro, Melford E. 1967. Burmese Supernaturalism: A Study in the Explanation
and Reduction of Suffering. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Welch, Holmes. 1973. The Practice of Chinese Buddhism, 1900—1950. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
CHRISTIANITY AND SHAMANISM The concept of shamanism was borrowed from its original central Asian context by historian of religions Mircea Eliade. His intent was to define the notion of shamanism with greater precision, so that it would no longer be arbitrarily equated with magic and wizardry (Eliade 1989, 13). Eliade identified as shamanic phenomena certain basic characteristics that can occur in all religions and cultures.
Christian theological studies, on the other hand, seldom use the concept of shamanism and rarely discuss it as a component of Christian texts and tradition. For many years, shamanic activities were usually regarded as standing in opposition to Christian religious practices. The reason for this avoidance of the concept derives, at least in part, from the history of the dissemination of Christianity and is related to Christianity’s rejection of magic and wizardry. There were, however, syncretistic phases in Christian religious and missionary history during which pagan influences were integrated. One such phase, for example, occurred in the sixth century c.e. when Pope Gregory the Great ordered a halt to the practice of destroying pre-Christian cult sites. But ever since the High Middle Ages and continuing into the early modern era, bloody missionary activities in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia set Christianity ever further apart from the religious rites of indigenous peoples. Christian dogma became progressively less willing to accept other peoples’ faiths as genuine religions on a par with Christianity.
This hierarchical attitude, along with the definition of the concept of magic, had already become firmly established in ancient times. Under the influence of the Greek enlightenment that started in the sixth century b.c.e., magic was deprecated, whether as part of reli
gion or medicine; philosophy and the enlightened sciences rejected magic and distanced themselves from it. The so-called evolutionary view, which began during the epoch of the ancient city cultures, regarded magic as a relic of an earlier and more primitive agrarian way of thinking that had served its purpose and become obsolete (Graf 1996, 18). This rejection of magic became particularly obvious after Emperor Constantine recognized Christianity as the official state religion and ordered decapitation as a punishment for practicing magic or fortune-telling in 357 c.e. (Kieckhefer 1992, 54). Nonetheless, the relationship between magic and religion continued to be an ambivalent one for many centuries, into the middle of the medieval period. “Monks in the monasteries employed magical healing methods with which they had become familiar partly from folk medicine of the native culture and partly from ancient medicine, both of which included magical elements” (Kieckhefer 1992, 72).
Beginning in the thirteenth century, moral and theological condemnation of magic increased steadily, sometimes going as far as juridical indictment and prosecution. The Latin word for superstition (superstitio) carries the connotation of “a remnant of paganism.” The accusation, which claimed that adherents of superstition had misunderstood certain passages in the Bible, supported a division of piety into a lower religion in opposition to a higher religion (Kieckhefer 1992, 212—213).
This division into low cultures as opposed to more highly valued cultures became still further reinforced during the Reformation of the sixteenth century and the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and survived into the twentieth century. The history of research into the concept of shamanism reveals the influence of this tendency, with much of
the work obviously judgmental in the words it uses as it attempts to deal with shamanic phenomena. Any discussion of shamanism or magic therefore requires “critical reflection about the conditional nature of the sources as well as the scientific, metalinguistic concepts and statements” (Motzki 1977, 16).
This religious and cultural history of Christianity has interposed itself and distorted the view on testimony contained in the Bible and on the dissemination of the Christian faith during the first three centuries c.e. Closer scrutiny shows that Biblical texts are by no means unanimous in their rejection of shamanic practice. Ever since the Christian faith was first committed to writing, opinions have differed, for example, about the way the work and person of Jesus as a healer ought to be judged and about the significance of ecstasy among the prophets and early Christian congregations.
A Shamanic Reading of Biblical Texts
The breadth of variation in the texts of the Christian tradition yields no unified picture. These texts indicate above all that shamanic activities were not fundamentally rejected, as they came to be in later apologetical discussion. On the contrary, elements of shamanic practice, such as the act of healing in Christ’s name or on his behalf and the ability to experience ecstasy, characterized the social work, welfare-related, and missionary activities of the early Christians during the first three centuries c.e.
In addition to orienting itself according to Eliade’s criteria and viewing the testimony from a phenomenological standpoint, this understanding of shamanic practice also relies on a functional definition of shamanism. Through the special way in which shamans practice ecstasy, they also have social significance, serving the community, for example, as intermediaries between the divine and the people or as healers of the sick (Motzki 1977, 48—49).
Mircea Eliade identified as specifically shamanic characteristics the technique of ecstasy and the shamanic flight as an ascent into heaven or a descent into the Underworld. In a wider spectrum, he particularly cited the special initiations that shamans undergo, the instruction they receive in the proper ways to conduct healing ceremonies, and necromancy. Eliade also described important shamanic symbols
such as the shaman’s costume and drum, and the special significance accorded to the numbers 7 and 9, the world tree, and the cosmic mountain (Eliade 1989, 148—268).
In this context, it is essential to realize that the aforementioned basic forms and functions of shamanism, as well as its characteristic symbols, can all be found in the Bible with varying frequency and in different combinations (Wil-helmi 2000, 11—17). Many of these forms and functions are or were components of Jewish and Christian religion, at least during a particular span of time.
Ecstasy
Ecstasy was fundamentally affirmed in a story about Moses and Joshua (Numbers 11:16), where the spirit of the Lord came upon seventy elders of the people, who thereupon experienced a seizure of prophetic ecstasy. In response to Joshua’s criticism, Moses exclaimed, “Would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!” (Numbers 11:29). Moses, who was also shown in Exodus 7 as one who magically competed with Egyptian sorcerers and who, especially in later Jewish tradition, was regarded together with Solomon as the guarantor of spiritual and magical knowledge, was shown here as a prophet who approved of ecstasy for his entire people.
The First Book of Samuel described companies of ecstatic prophets. Seized by the spirit of Yahweh, these groups of people played rapturous music upon instruments and fell into an ecstatic state of consciousness (1 Sam. 19: 20—24). The prophet Samuel described such a group to Saul and told him he would meet them prophesying and be changed himself: “The Spirit of the Lord will come mightily upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man” (1 Sam. 10:5—6). The spirit was described as an irresistible power that transformed, overwhelmed human volition, and led to a state of prophetic ecstasy. Ecstatic experiences were also mentioned as occurring among prophets of the sixth century b.c.e., for example, Isaiah and Ezekiel.
In the New Testament, ecstatic gestures among the early Christian communities were welcomed by Paul as evidence of charisma. He described them as “speaking in tongues” (glos-
solalia) and said, “He that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh unto God” (1 Cor. 14:2). Glossolalia was experienced in a communal setting, but not all people were capable of doing it. The story of Paul’s calling as told in the Acts of the Apostles is clearly related to shamanic ecstasy (Acts 9:1—19). Paul saw “a light from heaven,” heard a voice, and was stricken blind for three days, during which time he neither ate nor drank. Guided and treated by a spiritual helper, he emerged from the ordeal healed and transformed, and afterwards bore a different name. Paul explicitly mentioned his special ecstatic gift in his First Epistle to the Corinthians: “I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all” (1 Cor. 14:18). The Pentecostal story told in the second chapter of Acts likewise contains ecstatic elements.
The Shamanic Flight:
Ascent and Descent in the Bible
The prophet Ezekiel deserves particular mention with regard to the second shamanic criterion, namely, the shamanic flight. Several passages in the Bible recounted how Ezekiel was lifted up into the air by the spirit and borne upon wings (Ezekiel 3:12, 3:14, 8:3, 11:1). The similarity to shamanic ascents is evident in the change of states of consciousness, the description of the visions, and the intervention of a spiritual helper in male or female guise.
Another impressive vision of an ascent with shamanic overtones can be found in the Old Testament (Money 2001, 19). Jacob’s dream at Bethel, in which he saw a ladder that stretched from earth to heaven (Genesis 28:10—22) suggests the possibility of shamanic ascent, especially when it is considered in the overall context of the story of Jacob, who is sometimes described as a “trickster,” and even clad in animal’s pelts, albeit to fool his father into thinking he is Esau.
The New Testament mentioned an ascent into heaven by Jesus himself (Mark 16:19 and Luke 24:51, Acts 1:9—11). Perhaps intended primarily to lend credence to Jesus’ divine nature, this story may have little in common with shamanic journeys. Nonetheless, the depiction of his death, its interpretation as offering salvation to souls because he has thereby carried away the sins of humankind, and his
resurrection after three days all contain elements that bear strong similarity to Underworld journeys of the sort that can occur in the shamanic context.
Jesus as Shaman
The theologian Morton Smith discussed the evangelists’ texts primarily against the background of shamanic criteria (Smith 1978). In particular, he also included in his research certain statements that are recorded as having been uttered by opponents of Jesus and Christianity. Smith interpreted as characteristic of a shaman Jesus’ withdrawal into the desert, driven into the wilderness by the spirit of God for a lengthy period of time. Smith also called particular attention to Jesus’ communication with “wild beasts and angels” during this time (Mark 1:12—13). Other passages in the Gospel according to Mark likewise indicate that the evangelist unquestioningly viewed Jesus as having powers that can be considered shamanic, as also can be noted in parallel passages in the Gospels according to Matthew and Luke, where they discuss this story (Matthew 4:1—11, Luke 4:1—13).
In these Gospels, too, the tale of Jesus in the wilderness formed the beginning of the story of his works. This episode, however, was depicted here in a far more finely differentiated manner than in Mark. Matthew and Luke likewise mentioned the spirit who led Jesus into the wilderness, but communication with wild beasts and angels went unmentioned. While Jesus was fasting in the wilderness, the devil appeared and tempted him to embark on a shamanic flight, but Jesus resisted and refused to cast himself from “a pinnacle of the temple.” Jesus also denied the devil’s request to change stones into bread. Thus Matthew and Luke seem to distance themselves from the shamanic practices of flight and transubstantiation. On the other hand, the evangelists either approved of similar practices or emphasized descriptions of them. Dreams and visions, for example, are given particular significance in the Gospel according to Matthew.
Supernatural miracles such as the tale of the calming of the storm (Mark 4:35—41) likewise alluded to the shamanic motif of being able to exert a direct influence on natural forces (Koll-mann 1996, 272). Jesus’ rebuke and pacifica-
Sculpture relief depicting Christ healing the blind man. (Araldo de Luca/Corbis)
tion of the sea and wind seem to stand squarely in the context of ecstasy and the shamanic journey (Kollmann 1996, 275).
The gospels ascribed many shamanic roles to Jesus. Especially with regard to the functional definition of the shaman as one who practices shamanic techniques, it seems reasonable to speak of Jesus and his disciples as people who practiced techniques similar to those engaged in by shamans. Several different shamanic roles can be distinguished: (1) spiritual leader and guide (i.e., guardian of the consciousness of a people or group), (2) leader of ceremonies, (3) psychopomp (i.e., companion of souls), (4) bringer of good fortune, (5) healer and helper, (6) poet, singer, performer of shamanic acts (Hoppal 2000, 100).
The texts of the Biblical evangelists ascribed many of these shamanic roles to Jesus. The very
name Jesus (deliverer) expressed his role as a healer. In addition, he was also assigned the roles of savior and spiritual guide. It seems most important in this context to call attention to his unconditional sacrifice for humankind and to his social and helping acts. Healing, in the classical definition, is foremost among a shaman’s various tasks (Eliade 1989, 208).
Another typically shamanic motif can be seen in Jesus’ repeatedly asking people to tell him who and what they believed him to be. Shamans do not call themselves shamans (Smith 1978, 43—44). Jesus only described his acts, and he mentioned as first among them, “I cast out devils, and I do cures” (Luke 13:32). Healing the sick and casting out evil spirits numbered among the principal tasks engaged in by those who felt that they belonged with Jesus. The dualistic notion of evil and good spir
its, a dualism that is familiar in shamanic contexts, is also present here.
Although the healing tradition of ancient Greece had long since established itself in the Palestinian world, there also existed a vital tradition of ancient Jewish magical spells and rites designed to heal and help. There even seems to have been a comprehensive collected wisdom, attributed to King Solomon, about pharmacological medications and incantations (Koll-mann 1996, 137).
Some stories in the New Testament are nearly impossible to interpret unless they are considered from the point of view of religious and cultural history, in the light of magical papyri and traditions handed down from Joseph and preserved by rabbinical Judaism (Blau 1898). As an example of this, consider the passage where Jesus says, “Whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward” (Mark 9:41). The meaning of this passage is difficult to understand unless one knows that a spilled cup of water was regarded as a sign that an evil spirit had departed (Merkelbach 1996, 6).
From this perspective, it seems reasonable to reconsider and reevaluate many other passages in the Gospels. Although some passages urge that the person of Jesus not be reduced to his thaumaturgical abilities (Kollmann 1996, 379), passages about those miracle-working abilities are more numerous and more comprehensive than are passages that deal with other contents (Mark 2:17ff).
Healing Rituals in Early Christian Communities
During the first three centuries after Jesus, his adherents and opponents alike testified to the importance that healings and psychopomp work played in the missionary dissemination of Christianity (Brown 1999, 41). As early as the Acts of the Apostles, explicit descriptions were given of several cures performed by Jesus’ disciples. Peter, for example, healed by means of tal-itha kumi, an ancient Aramaic phrase that means “arise” (Acts 9:34 and 9:40). Jesus too uses this spell. The healing of possessed and ailing people subsequently became a matter of course within the everyday life of early Christian communities, where such practices were
regulated through the offices of the presbyters, “the elders of the church” (James 5:14—15).
Justin and Tertullian continued the tradition of these successful early Christian healings into the Roman Empire, whenever pagan conjurers, magicians, and pharmacologists failed or were too expensive (Kollmann 1996, 373). For Ter-tullian, it was important in whose name the possessing spirits were expelled. Tertullian reports on specific individual cases and, like Origen and others, he did not preach against the belief in spirits or psychopomp practice per se (Kollmann 1996, 374), as long as the spirit invoked by the healer is the spirit of God.
A turning point seems to have occurred during the fourth century c.e. In the context of confrontations with pagans and in the wake of Christianity’s recognition as the official state religion, thaumaturgic practice declined among Christians and ceased to be a basic aspect of the Christian mission (Barb 1961). Although Christian enthusiastic and spiritual groups (e.g., Pentecostal and revivalist congregations) have arisen repeatedly throughout subsequent centuries, it was the word of God that came to occupy the central position in Protestant theology. Thought and thinking have continued to occupy the foreground since the Reformation and Enlightenment. Attempts were made to offer rational explanations for miracles, which were generally dismissed as more or less marginal events in the actual history of Jesus and his works. Only the general theology of the Resurrection and Epiphany remained untouched by this rationalist tendency to minimize the importance of wonder-working (Koll-mann 1996, 379).
Liaisons with Foreign Religions: Motifs and Symbols
On the liturgical level of religion, motifs of the Christian faith entered into liaisons with similar motifs in foreign religions and often developed into new religions or cults. One example of this evolution is the contemporary appearance of the peyote cult. The central element of this cult is a sort of sacrament, a holy repast (Hultkrantz 1992, 270). The background of this sacramental banquet is a ritual practiced by Mexican Indians in which peyote is eaten in order to come into contact with supernatural beings. As time went on, this cult evolved into
an independent religion containing certain Catholic contents.
When symbols that have been isolated from their cultural and historical surroundings are carefully reviewed, numerous relationships can be discovered between shamanic notions and corresponding Christian or Biblical ideas. In addition to the cosmic mountain, which plays a central role as Horeb in the Old Testament and as the “high mountain” where Jesus undergoes transfiguration in the Gospels, it is above all the symbol of the Crucifix that deserves particular emphasis. Within the context of Christian religious history, the meaning of the Cross soon became divorced from its historical form as an instrument of torture. The cruciform symbol came to express the relationship between the world and the heavens as an orderly connection between God and man. The Crucifix is thus quite similar to the shaman’s drum in this sense. Furthermore, many men and women shamans have had and continue to have spiritual relationships with the person of Jesus Christ and can justifiably describe them-selves—often in an ecstatic state—as having “Christ consciousness.”
A New Approach
A new approach to the relationship between Christianity and shamanism has evolved during the past several decades. Christian missionary theology is giving a new impulse to intercul-tural dialogue through the reawakened selfawareness of formerly missionized peoples of Asia, Africa, and Central and South America.
Whereas in the past the declaration of faith in Christ meant a break with tradition, the encounter with indigenous religions is now being described anew, and the one-sided, exclusively Western pattern of interpretation is no longer being continued. The situation in contemporary Korea deserves explicit mention here within the context of Protestant theology. On the one hand, evangelistic denominations have the largest number of adherents in Korea, and at the same time, shamanism thrives as a substantial feature of Korean culture. Korean theologians are formulating Korean Christianity’s encounter with the country’s native religions in a new way and do not necessarily regard the encounter as inherently confrontational or contradictory (Choi 1999). This view has conse
quences for the future evolution of Christian theology in general. In the long ignored areas of creation theology and the awareness of nature, it can offer new impulses for a more holistically oriented view of the world and humankind.
Another example of new impulses for inter-cultural dialogue about healing and ecclesiastical practice comes from missionary stations in Africa. After a long period of time during which a generally demystified understanding of the New Testament’s text had predominated, the African cultural context led to a rediscovery of the Christian healing tradition in accord with the continent’s own understanding of the nature of reality (Kahl 2001, 118). This new access also led to changes in conventional Christian theology, so that religious services conducted with the intent to heal or rituals performed with the intent of bestowing blessings are again the subject of more intensive discussion.
The history of the relationship between Christianity and shamanism has alternated between intimacy and aloofness. Throughout many centuries and even into recent times, the interpretation and exegesis of Christian texts has been characterized by an effort to distance Christianity from shamanism. Of late, however, a rapprochement has become evident, catalyzed in part by the current renewal of shamanic and indigenous traditions among various groups.
The practice of Christian counseling too is being stimulated and revivified in the context of the New Spirituality and through a return to its own early Christian roots. Renewed attention to features that are shared by both early Christianity and shamanism alike is helping to catalyze a reconciliation in the intercultural and interreligious context.
Barbara Wilhelmi
See also: Choctaw Shamanism; Colonialism and Shamanism; Dreams and Visions; Ethnocentrism and Shamanism; Korean Shamanism; Latin American Christianity and Shamanism
References and further reading:
Barb, A. A. 1961. “The Survival of Magic Arts.”
Pp. 100—126 in: The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century. Edited by Arnaldo Momigliano. Oxford, UK Clarendon Press.
Blau, Ludwig. 1898. Das Altjudische Zauberwesen. Shassburg: K. Trubner.
Brown, Peter. 1999. Die Entstehung des christlichen Europa. Munchen: Beck.
Choi, Sung Soo. 1999. Koreanisches Christentum in der Begegnung mit einheimischen Religionen: Beitrage zur theologischen Urteilsbildung. Vol. 7. Edited by Gerhard Sauter. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, Europaischer Verlag der Wissenschaften.
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Graf, Fritz. 1996. Gottesnahe und Schadenzauber: Die Magie in der griechisch-romischen Antike. Munich: Beck.
Hoppal, Mihaly. 2000. Shaman Traditions in Transition. Budapest: International Society for Shamanistic Research.
Hultkrantz, Ake. 1992. Shamanic Healing and Ritual Drama. New York: Crossroad.
Kahl, Werner. 2001. “Heilungserfahrungen in westafrikanischen Kirchen und ihr kultureller Kontext—betrachtet aus neutestamentlicher Perspektive.” Pp.117—141 in Heilung in Mission und Okumene, Studienheft 41, Weltmission Heute. Hamburg: EMW.
Kieckhefer, Richard. 1992. Magie im Mittelalter. Munchen: Beck.
Kollmann, Bernd. 1996. Jesus und die Christen als Wundertater, Studien zu Magie, Medizin und Schamanismus in Antike und Christentum. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.
Merkelbach, Reinhold, ed. 1996. Abrasax: Ausgewahlte Papyri religiosen und magischen Inhalts. Vol. 4: Exorzismen und judisch/christlich beeinflusste Texte. Opladen, Germany: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Money, Mike. 2001. “Deceit and Duality: Jacob’s Shamanic Vision.” P. 19 in Shaman, vol. 9 (Spring)1: 19.
Motzki, Harald. 1977. Schamanismus als Problem religionswissenschaftlicher Terminologie. Bonn: Religions Wissenschaftliches Seminar der Universitat Bonn.
Smith, Morton. 1978. Jesus the Magician. San Francisco: Barnes and Noble.
Wilhelmi, Barbara. 2003. “The Prophetic Performance in the Bible and the Shamanic Ritual.” Pp. 11—19 in Rediscovery of Shamanic Heritage. Edited by Mihaly Hoppal.
Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.
COLONIALISM AND SHAMANISM
According to the classic definition proposed by Ake Hultkrantz, a shaman is “a social functionary who, with the help of guardian spirits, attains ecstasy to create a rapport with the supernatural world on behalf of his [or her] group members” (Hultkrantz 1973). As a social functionary, the shaman is defined not merely by extraordinary personal abilities to achieve ecstasy, communicate with spirits, or affect the healing of individuals, but also by a public capacity to mediate between a transcendent reality and a particular social group. In many instances, the relevant social group for a shaman is constituted by kinship, since shamans often serve as hereditary ritual specialists for their clans. But the constitution of a community might also be determined by broader social relations within a territory. Operating as an inspirational mediator on behalf of a community, the shaman necessarily performs a range of political, social, and economic roles. Under colonial conditions, those roles are inevitably altered.
In simple terms, colonialism is the use of military and political power to create and maintain a situation in which colonizers gain economic benefits from the raw materials and cheap labor of the colonized (Chidester 2000a). Generally, colonizers come from outside of a territory, arriving as alien intruders to dominate an indigenous people, although situations of internal colonialism have also involved similar relations of domination.
Not only a system of military, political, and economic power, colonialism is also a cultural project, advancing a cultural agenda, but also entailing intercultural contacts, relations, and exchanges. Often legitimated by explicit appeals to religion, colonialism inevitably affects indigenous religious life. Following the colonial disruption, dispossession, and displacement of an indigenous community, everything changes, including the religious roles of shamans. Characteristically, in response to colonizing forces, shamans are faced with the options of extinction, assimilation, or resistance. However, more complex, creative responses have also been evident in new strategies for weaving together alien and indigenous religious resources. Although colonization has always been destructive of indigenous religion, shamans have often
played new, innovative roles as mediators, now not only between the supernatural and human beings but also between the religious worlds of the colonizers and the colonized.
Mobility, Geography, and Resources Since they provided the original source of the term shaman, Siberian shamans have often been regarded as the classic type of indigenous religious specialist. However, subject as it has been to two empires, Chinese and Russian, Siberian shamanism has been shaped by a long history of colonization. That history has witnessed both political fluctuations and religious changes in the mobility, spiritual geography, and spiritual resources of shamanism.
Buryat shamanism, which was subjected to colonization by both Chinese and Russian empires, illustrates religious persistence and change, surviving persecution, but also adopting a new mobility under colonial conditions. In Buryat shamanism, ritual specialists mediated between humans and the supernatural in two ways, developing a hunter’s shamanism, which negotiated access to game animals, and a cattle-breeder’s shamanism, which negotiated relations between the living and the dead, the ancestral masters of the mountains. Chinese imperial states, such as the Manchu Qing dynasty (1644—1911), that supported Buddhism tended to force shamanism into a marginal position by asserting a centralized claim over material and spiritual resources. When those states collapsed, Buddhism retreated, and shamanism resurged in Inner Asian states. In these imperial religious politics, the vitality of shamanism was clearly affected by the fate of empires.
Many indigenous people living in tribal arrangements during the nineteenth century, however, recalled an earlier history of imperial power, a time in which their shamans were at the center of political power. In relation to the Chinese empire, competing religious interests could operate in the same political economy of the sacred. Although the political status of shamanism depended on the historical rise and fall of empires, shamans, Buddhist clergy, and officials of imperial ancestor veneration operated in the same field of religious references, making competing claims on access to the sky, for example, which represented the supreme symbol of political authority from all religious
perspectives encompassed within the Chinese empire (Humphrey 1994, 196). Accordingly, shamanic ascent, which represented the hallmark of a shaman’s spiritual capacity, also registered as an explicitly political claim.
When subjected to the force of a dominant, colonizing Chinese empire, however, shamanism was usually cut off from establishing access to centralized political power. Beginning in the nineteenth century, Buryat shamanism survived Buddhist persecutions by working out a kind of division of spiritual labor between shamans and lamas. Making no explicitly political claims, shamans assumed responsibility for healing. As the case of Buryat shamanism shows, shamans have generally been vulnerable to centralizing religious power. Although shamanism can adapt, what often survives are the most portable aspects of shamanic practice, such as techniques of healing which are not necessarily anchored in the political economy of a community, but are services that can be made available to clients wherever they might be. In colonial situations all over the world, this new mobility of shamanism has been made necessary not only by the expansion of imperial power but also by the disruption of local communities. In the process, religious mobility has become a new requirement of indigenous survival.
Although marginalized under the centralized, hierarchical power of Chinese empires, Buryat shamans nevertheless survived, even if their sphere of political, social, and economic influence was circumscribed. For Buryat shamans enclosed during the seventeenth century within the Russian protectorate, Russian colonization allowed much less room to maneuver. Although shamans were active in antiRussian revolts, they were forced to retreat in the face of overwhelming military power. Legitimated by Orthodox Christianity, Russian colonization entailed a more pervasive project of converting indigenous people, land, and wealth to Russian ends.
As the Russian empire advanced, shamanism was systematically persecuted. In response to the colonization of their religious life, indigenous people displayed a range of strategic positions, rejecting, accepting, or selectively appropriating the Christian mission that accompanied Russian colonization. For example, in nineteenth-century Siberia and Alaska, the Chukchee disregarded the missionary mes
sage; the Dena’ina embraced Christianity; and the Altaians engaged in selective borrowing of Christian symbols (Znamenski 1999). Although different indigenous responses were possible, Russian colonialism inevitably altered the religious position of shamans. In addition to adopting a new colonial mobility, often demonstrated by fleeing to remote places, shamans developed new spiritual geographies and new spiritual resources for negotiating with the spiritual world on behalf of their fractured communities.
Among the Khanty and the Mansi in northwestern Siberia, an indigenous political system of chiefdoms was destroyed by Russian colonization during the sixteenth century. Beginning in the eighteenth century, these Ob-Ugrian people were subjected to forced conversion to Christianity. Since they were closer to the imperial center of Russia, the Khanty and Mansi were exposed to the full range of colonizing measures developed by European states—alienation of land ownership, multiple forms of taxation, exactions by professional civil servants, and legal prohibitions on indigenous religion. Instead of adapting to these measures or inspiring revolts against Russian colonization, shamans retreated to the forests. Surviving in exile, they developed a new spiritual geography.
Like many indigenous people displaced by colonial incursions, these shamans found that the meaning of their territory, including their spiritual territory, had been fundamentally altered. In earlier practice, a shaman might have been adept at spiritual travel, but shamanic voyages generally moved on a horizontal plane from the ordinary world of the community to the places of extraordinary power associated with the forest or the sea. Under colonial conditions, horizontal movement within this spiritual geography of the world tended to be replaced by a vertical axis along which shamans ascended to the sky or descended to the Underworld. Living in exile in the forest, shamans no longer traveled to the spiritual forest, but instead they journeyed into heavenly realms and subterranean regions that were beyond the geography of this world. Since this world had come under the control of an alien colonizing power, shamans had to work out an alternative spiritual geography that transcended colonial conditions (Hamayon 1995).
New maps for the spiritual world, therefore, could be developed in colonial situations. Subjected to foreign domination, shamans all over the world found that they were suddenly in a world turned upside down, a world in which alien intruders from foreign places had become central and indigenous people were alienated from their own land. In the case of many Siberian communities, shamans assumed the responsibility for remapping the contours of a spiritual geography in such a distorted world. No longer able to draw upon spiritual meaning and power within the world, they looked to other worlds. Although the vertical axis of ascending and descending into spiritual worlds has often been regarded as a constant, universal feature of shamanism, in many cases this verticality, replacing earlier attention to the spiritual contours of a territory, might instead represent an innovative religious response to the crisis of colonial domination.
While developing new spiritual geographies, shamans under colonial conditions also appropriated new religious resources of spiritual power from the Christian mission. In northern Siberia, Yakut shamanism, which had been subjugated by Russian colonization from the beginning of the seventeenth century, displayed this indigenous appropriation of alien sacred symbols. Although the Yakut people converted to Christianity for a variety of material reasons, such as avoiding persecution or gaining tax relief, the majority had been baptized by the end of the eighteenth century. Preserving the indigenous traditions of shamanism, Yakut ritual specialists modified those traditions by introducing aspects of Russian Orthodox Christianity, including God, the Virgin Mary, guardian angels, and the promise of spiritual rewards in a heavenly afterlife. By integrating these Christian features, Yakut shamans were not merely developing a syncretism of foreign Christianity and indigenous religion. They were drawing in new, transcendent, and powerful negotiating partners in their ongoing spiritual work of securing health, prosperity, and survival for their community.
Shamanism is not merely mediation but also negotiation with supernatural forces on behalf of a community. In the case of indigenous Yakut religion, with its basis in hunting, shamans were particularly adept at negotiating with the masters of animals for the souls of
wild game. Not only expert in techniques of ecstasy, they were skilled in negotiating techniques, supplicating and imploring, but also bartering, trading, and exchanging with the spiritual world. In rituals of healing, for example, shamans could negotiate with spirits by trading a sacrificial animal for the soul of a sick person. Such negotiations with spirits were central to shamanic sessions. Aided by a principal spirit, usually an ancestral spirit, Yakut shamans conducted ongoing negotiations with the forces of the spiritual world on behalf of their clan or community.
Under colonialism, however, indigenous ritual specialists experienced a breakdown in negotiations, a shift from earlier relations of reciprocal exchange to new colonial relations based on the invasive, coercive, one-way flow of value from the colonized, who were dispossessed of their resources, displaced from their territory, and exploited for their labor, to the colonizers. By introducing new negotiating partners into the spiritual world, spiritual negotiating partners associated with the religion of the colonizers, shamans struggled to change the very terms of negotiation in ways that might restore reciprocity between indigenous people and the spiritual world.
As specialists in ritual techniques of trance, healing, and spiritual power, shamans continued to play a significant role in Siberian and Alaskan religious life, even when subject to Russian domination and Christian conversion. Sent to Alaska in the 1820s, the Russian Orthodox missionary Ioann Veniaminov (later Bishop Innocent; 1797—1879) found a Christian shaman among the Aleuts, an elderly man by the name of Ivan Smirennikov, who had been baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church, but was regarded by the local Aleutian people as a shaman because of his familiarity with spirits that enabled him to see the future, heal individuals, and locate food for the community.
Based on his investigations, Veniaminov found that Ivan Smirennikov was a “shaman, not an ordinary person.” During his interview with the shaman, Veniaminov learned that shortly after his baptism in 1795 Ivan Smiren-nikov had been visited by two spirits who said that they had been sent by God to instruct him in Christian teachings. Over the next thirty years, the spirits appeared to him almost daily, providing Christian instruction, but warning
him not to listen to the Russians or to confess his sins to their priests. Instead, he was to rely directly on the spirits, and they would grant his requests and the requests made by others through him. To Veniaminov’s surprise, he found that Smirennikov had become not only a noted shaman but also an informed Christian through the mysterious intervention of the two spirits. Although Veniaminov worried that these spirits were demons, he became convinced that the Aleut shaman’s spirits provided confirmation rather than competition for his Christian gospel. The two spirits, according to Smirennikov, were even prepared to reveal themselves to the Russian priest, although they chastised him for his curiosity: “What does he want? Does he consider us demons?” Accepting the orthodoxy of Ivan Smirennikov, the Russian priest nevertheless insisted that he should not be regarded among the local people as a shaman. “I told the other Aleuts who were present not to call him a Shaman,” Veniaminov reported, “not to ask him for favours, but to ask God.” Apparently, the shaman agreed with this resolution, since he was also convinced that his spiritual negotiating partners were not demons but emissaries of the one true God of heaven and earth (Chidester 2000b, 382—388).
Memory, Concealment, and Noise
In Christian representations of indigenous religion, we find a long history of demonizing local forms of religious life, from the expansion of Roman Catholic Christianity into Europe to the explorations and conquests of the New World. The earliest appearances of the term shaman in travelers’ reports tended to demonize indigenous religious specialists. Having served at the court of Peter the Great and journeyed through imperial Russia, Nicolas Witsen (1640—1717) reported in his travel account, Noord en Oost Tartaryen, that a “Schaman” was nothing more nor less than a priest of the devil (Flaherty 1992, 23). While allegedly serving the devil and his demons, shamans were also represented as fakes, frauds, or imposters, thus combining genuine evil with deception. This mixture of authenticity and fakery made the shaman a strange contradiction—full of real demonic power, but empty of legitimate religious power—in colonial representations of indigenous religions.
Certainly, these accounts recycled classic features of superstition, which could be rendered as beliefs and practices based on ignorance, fear, and fraud, as the defining antithesis of authentic religion. Nevertheless, the depiction of shamans as authentic frauds represented a strange crisis for the ideology of Christian colonization well into the nineteenth century. Working in southern Africa during the 1830s, the missionary Robert Moffat dismissed the local ritual specialists, the Tswana ngaka, as nothing more than imposters, but at the same time demonized them, along with all other indigenous religious specialists, whether the “angekoks” of Greenland, the “pawpaws” of North America, or the “greegrees” of West Africa, by identifying them as the “pillars of Satan’s kingdom” (Moffat 1842, 305; Chidester 1996, 192). In this formula, shamans, who supposedly were empty of any real power, were paradoxically also full of demonic power as the primary obstacles to the advance of a colonizing Christian empire.
Suggesting more than merely an alien incomprehension of indigenous religious specialists, this colonial representation of shamans as demonic obstacles, simultaneously immaterial and material, underwrote specific colonial policies of religious destruction. In the Americas, the extirpation of idolatry entailed both physical and spiritual warfare against shamans. According to Bishop Pena Montenegro in 1668, Indian shamans, who “since time immemorial had been worshiping the devil,” formed “the principal obstacle to the spread of the Gospel.” These sorcerers and magicians, charlatans and imposters, he argued, “resist with diabolical fervor,” in order to avoid being exposed as frauds, “so that the light of truth shall not discredit their fabulous arts.” To overcome these diabolical obstacles, Bishop Pena Montenegro advocated a campaign against what he regarded as fake material objects and real immaterial demons. Military action had to be taken to “destroy their drums, deerheads, and feathers,” the bishop urged, “because these are the instruments of their evil and bring on the memory of paganism” (Taussig 1987, 143, 376). Destroying sacred objects, therefore, was part of a campaign against real spiritual forces of memory— the memory of ritual, the memory of ancestors, the memory of the land, or the memory of an indigenous way of life—identified by the alien
logic of colonialism as an integral part of the evil, diabolical work of shamans.
In northern Siberia, shamanism was also reconfigured under colonial conditions as a work of memory. As reported by Martin Sauer, secretary to the expedition of Joseph Billings (ca. 1758—1806), which had been commissioned by Catherine the Great, the advance of colonization and Christianization had undermined the authority of once almost-omnipo-tent shamans. Like the Roman Catholic extirpation of idolatry in the Americas, the Russian Orthodox campaign against indigenous religion attacked the material signs of shamanism, the masks, musical instruments, and other material objects of spiritual practice. In the process, Sauer observed that their old customs were abolished (1802, 308), but the shaman was recast as the guardian of indigenous memory. Weaving together threads of indigenous continuity that had been broken by colonization, the shaman assumed a new role, which could be acquired through extraordinary acts of resistance or recalled in ordinary, everyday nostalgia for a lost heritage. Among the Yakuts, as Sauer reported, a man by the name of Aley had shown remarkable skill in avoiding the Russian conquerors and leading people to safety. By demonstrating this extraordinary power against the overwhelming power of the colonizers, Aley came to be regarded as a shaman and began to practice traditional divination (Sauer 1802, 110). As this case suggests, colonial situations could redefine the role of the shaman as defender of tribal survival, thereby creating new ways of becoming a shaman.
Under the weight of colonial oppression, however, many indigenous people could only recall the power of shamans as a lost legacy, a memory preserved but also distorted under colonial conditions. According to one of Sauer’s Yakut informants who had been forcibly converted to Christianity, shamans represented traces of a lost world that only survived in memory, even if the indigenous terms of memory had been Christianized. Indigenous shamans, Sauer’s informant recalled, “were observers of omens, and warned us of approaching dangers, to avert which sacrifices were made to the demons” (1802, 308). Betraying the influence of a pervasive Christian demonology, this Yakut account nevertheless located the shaman not as an obstacle to over-
The taking of Kumassi, Ashanti Expedition; the submission of King Prempeh. Gold Coast, West Africa. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)
come but as the dividing line between current misery and a precolonial world in which the Yakuts had been “wealthy, contented, and free.” Under colonial conditions, that lost world could only be recreated in memory, a memory so fragile, however, that Sauer’s Yakut informant concluded that “our former religion was sort of a dream” (Sauer 1802, 308).
In this new work of memory under colonial conditions, shamans concealed ritual objects from alien colonizers, adding another layer to the practice of concealment that was already part of the shaman’s ritual repertoire. As the traveler Giuseppi Acerbi reported, Siberian shamans hid their ritual drums from Christian missionaries, in the process concealing their true religious identities from outsiders (Acerbi 1802, 2:294). Accused in colonial accounts of being diabolic deceivers, shamans actually were forced to engage in deception to preserve them
selves, their practices, and their ritual objects from destruction. Secrecy, therefore, assumed new meaning under colonial conditions.
Although shamanic practices were concealed from the colonial gaze, they often registered in colonial ears as incomprehensible noise. From a colonial perspective, the sound of the shaman’s drum produced meaningless noise rather than coherent music. Songs, chants, and ritual performances were often described in colonial accounts as dissonant noise. As Acerbi reported, the song of the Siberian shaman, performed in secret in the mountains, was “the most hideous kind of yelling that can be conceived” (Acerbi 1802, 2:311). Likewise, in early reports from the Americas, shamans were said to produce the “most hideous Yellings and Shrieks” (cited in Flaherty 1992, 26), while accounts from southern Africa claimed that indigenous ritual experts “sang only ha, ho, HO, HO, until one
almost lost hearing and sight because of the terrible noise” (cited in Chidester 1996, 40—41).
For colonial regimes relying upon visual surveillance, verbal command, and embodied discipline, the practices of shamans represented a kind of sensory disorganization. Inherently threatening to colonial rule, this alternative ordering of the senses was sometimes intentionally deployed by indigenous ritual specialists in opposition to a colonial domination. In the Eastern Cape of southern Africa during the late 1830s and early 1840s, a Xhosa diviner by the name of Mngqatsi conducted regular rituals outside the British colonial settlement of Gra-hamstown, frightening the settlers with loud drumming and chanting. Often performed on Sundays, these rituals sought to disrupt the religious order of colonialism (Chidester 1992, 43). During the 1920s in central and southern Africa, anticolonial noise was transposed into a Christian idiom, under the influence of Pentecostal missions, in the practice of chongo, allnight sessions of loud drumming, singing, shouting, and speaking in strange tongues. Although chongo was nothing more than “gibbering, shivering, and generally mad fits,” according to colonial administrator Charles Draper, his attempt to suppress this religious activity suggests that the sounds of shamanic ecstasy could be perceived as threatening colonial authority and control (Fields 1985, 156). Occasionally, shamans were involved in explicitly anticolonial movements and revolts (Capeci and Knight 1990). Their mere existence, however, represented a wild space beyond colonial control.
Wildness
In colonial situations, shamanism can be located in struggles over the meaning and power of wildness. Drawing on a long history of literary and pictorial representations of the “wild man,” European colonizers generally saw shamans as the wildest among wild people. As a hunting religion, requiring familiarity with wild animal spirits, shamanism has been perceived as essentially wild, but only from the perspective of a social order based on animal husbandry and settled agriculture. For colonizers based in metropolitan centers of empire, shamanism represented the wild, dangerous, and disruptive antithesis of urban order.
As the opposite of domestication, wildness has often appeared as an indigenous category. Throughout southern Africa, for example, indigenous African religious life was organized by a structured opposition between the domestic space of the home, which was sanctified through relations with ancestors, and the wild space of the forest, bush, or desert, which harbored wild, dangerous, and evil forces. Operating between the domestic space and the wild space, African ritual specialists invoked ancestral spirits to protect the home against evil forces of the wild. Often, those evil forces were identified with witches, those antisocial agents who drew upon the dangerous power of the wild space. When colonial governments intervened to stop the detection and exposure of these agents of evil, indigenous ritual specialists could only conclude that the colonists were in league with the witches, colluding with these wild forces to disrupt the stable order of the ancestral home (Chidester 1992, 4—5).
In precolonial Andean religion, shamans also moved between domesticated order and the wild forces associated with the forests. Under the Inca empire, the shamans of the highland, who assumed religious responsibility for maintaining social order, stood in contrast to the lowland shamans of the forest, the wild, dangerous, and sometimes rebellious specialists in techniques of ecstasy (Taussig 1987, 99, 236—37). In the highlands, kubu shamans tended to comprise a small elite, the “owners of the chants,” skilled in the regular rituals of the life cycle, social relations, and political stability. In the lowlands, payes (or piais) shamans formed a more egalitarian, decentralized network of religious practitioners, gaining extraordinary power through rituals of trance and spirit possession, aided by hallucinogens, power that could be used in healing, hunting, or warfare. The lowland shamans were conversant with auca, “the wild.” Challenging the centralized political power of the highlands during the era of Inca sovereignty, these wild shamans of the forest were also at the forefront of religiously inspired rebellions against Spanish colonial authority. During the nineteenth century, shaman-prophets, identifying themselves with Christ as the “payes of the Cross,” organized messianic movements in opposition to both foreign domination and indigenous shamans of the highlands (Hugh-Jones 1994, 47—49). As
these religious rebellions suggest, anticolonial resistance can also address indigenous tensions between religiously sanctioned social order and the religious power of the wild.
In colonial engagements with wildness, indigenous and alien categories generated hybrid productions of meaning and power. Although wildness defied colonial control, many colonizers, following the novelist Joseph Conrad into the “heart of darkness,” were both repelled and attracted by the “mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men” (Conrad 1973, 9). As the wildest of the wild, the shaman was a focal point of colonial fear and fascination. Despite colonial policies of opposition, European settlers on colonial frontiers were known to consult indigenous shamans for healing or divination, although these intercultural exchanges have been largely neglected in the history of shamanism.
Today, they still consult. For many scholars in the academic study of religion, following Mircea Eliade’s classic text, Shamanism, the shaman exemplifies premodern religious experience, cultivated by “archaic techniques of ecstasy,” a spirituality however that has been irrecoverably lost in modernity (Eliade 1989). For enthusiasts of New Age spirituality, including self-proclaimed “white shamans” in the United States, the shaman exemplifies postmodern religious experience, available to anyone, anywhere (Noel 1997). By signing up for guided shamanic tours, which take spiritual tourists to meet with shamans in Siberia, Africa, or the Amazon, anyone can be initiated into the wild spirituality of the shaman. Between the premodern and the postmodern, the realities of colonialism anchored the religious practices of shamans within specific relations of meaning and power. Acting on behalf of a community, even when that community was displaced and dispossessed, shamans developed new religious strategies, not only for preserving archaic techniques of ecstasy, but also for exercising new capacities for memory, concealment, performance, translation, and transformation in negotiating indigenous religious survival under difficult colonial conditions.
David Chidester
See also: Buddhism and Shamanism; Buryat Shamanism; Central and South American
Shamanism; Chinese Shamanism, Classical; Ethnocentrism and Shamanism; Sakha Shamanism; Siberian Shamanism
References and further reading:
Acerbi, Giuseppe. 1802. Travels through Sweden, Finland, and Lapland, to the North Cape in the Years 1798 and 1799. 2 vols. London: J. Mawman.
Capeci, Dominic, and Jack Knight. 1990. “Reactions to Colonialism: The North American Ghost Dance and the East African Maji-Maji Rebellion.” Historian 5: 584—601.
Chidester, David. 1992. Religions of South Africa. London: Routledge.
———. 1996. Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
-------. 2000a. “Colonialism.” Pp. 423—437 in Guide to the Study of Religion. Edited by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon. London: Cassell.
———. 2000b. Christianity: A Global History. London: Allen Lane/Penguin; San Francisco: HarperCollins.
Conrad, Joseph. 1973. Reprint. Heart of Darkness. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Original edition, 1902.
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Fields, Karen E. 1985. Revival and Rebellion in Colonial Central Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Flaherty, Gloria. 1992. Shamanism and the Eighteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hamayon, Roberte. 1995. “Southern Siberian Religions.” In Encyclopedia of Religion. Edited by Mircea Eliade. New York: Macmillan.
Hugh-Jones, Stephen. 1994. “Shamans, Prophets, Priests, and Pastors.” Pp. 32—75 in Shamanism, History, and the State. Edited by Nicholas Thomas and Caroline Humphrey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Hultkrantz, Ake. 1973. “A Definition of Shamanism.” Temenos 9: 25—37.
Humphrey, Caroline. 1994. “Shamanic Practices and the State in Northern Asia: Views from the Center and the Periphery.” Pp. 191—228 in Shamanism, History, and the
State. Edited by Nicholas Thomas and Caroline Humphrey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Moffat, Robert. 1842. Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa. London: John Snow.
Noel, Daniel C. 1997. The Soul of Shamanism: Western Fantasies, Imaginal Realities. New York: Continuum.
Sauer, Martin. 1802. An Account of a Geographical and Astronomical Expedition to the Northern Parts of Russia. London: T.
Cadell.
Taussig, Michael. 1987. Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wafer, Lionel. 1729. A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America. 3d ed. London: J. and J. Knapton. Original edition 1699.
Znamenski, Andrei A. 1999. Shamanism and Christianity: Native Encounters with Russian Orthodox Missions in Siberia and Alaska, 1820—1917. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
CORE SHAMANISM AND NEO-SHAMANISM
For centuries, both in Europe and North America, people have been on spiritual quests for meaning, transcendence, and healing. This search has become more intensive at various times in history, and the modern mystical movement (Townsend 1988) of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is one of the most recent examples.
Within the mystical movement there are two forms. In group movements people are subject to that group’s doctrine; individualist movements are structured as fluid networks—indi-viduals create their own meanings based on a variety of sources (Townsend 1999a, 224). Modern individualist movements include the following broad categories:
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1. New Age, which emphasizes such things as trance channeling, tarot, reincarnation beliefs, and astrology
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2. Neopaganism, positive witchcraft, Wicca, Goddess religion, and groups that focus on the earth as a living organism
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3. Modern shamanic spirituality, consisting of Core Shamanism and Neo-Shamanism
Those who practice Core and Neo-Shaman-ism object strongly to being included within a generic New Age category. Although some practitioners, especially of Neo-Shamanism, do overlap with Neo-paganism and occasionally with New Age, to include them as merely one subset of a larger category seriously obscures the uniqueness of these explorations.
Core and Neo-Shamanism are especially appealing for people on quests for transcendence and healing because they offer the potential for direct contact with the spirit world. At least part of their inspiration is drawn from “traditional shamanism,” a term used here to designate shamanism practiced in a society over a long period of time and considered a continuous cultural presence (Hoppal 2000, 89). Traditional shamanism can be observed among some indigenous societies in various areas of the world, particularly the Arctic and Subarctic, North America, and Asia; it occurs within a variety of cultures and belief systems. (For a detailed discussion of traditional shamanism see Townsend 1997a). Consequently adaptation of aspects of shamanism into Core or NeoShamanism by people within modern Western belief systems is a comparatively simple matter (Brunton 1999, 233; Harner 1980; Townsend 1988).
Belief System
The belief systems of Core Shamanism and parts of Neo-Shamanism are similar. Their paradigms maintain that sentience and interconnectedness permeate the universe. Like traditional shamans, Core and Neo-Shamans believe that there are two realities: the ordinary material reality of conscious, waking life and alternate (nonordinary, or spiritual) reality, which is peopled by spirits, souls of the dead, deities, transcendent powers, and other entities. Usually alternate reality is conceived of as having three layers: the Lower World, the Middle World (which occupies the same space as ordinary reality), and the Upper World. By entering an altered state of consciousness one can travel in alternate reality to various levels of the spirit world to gain knowledge and help and healing for people in the material world. Further, what
happens in alternate reality can affect material reality (Townsend 1988; 1997a, 437).
Very important in addressing Core and NeoShamanism is the fundamental epistemological quandary dealing with questions of the source of misfortune (and evil, if such exists), death and the afterlife (if there is one), and the nature of reality: whether there are deities and spirits separate from the individual, or whether the individual is part of an undifferentiated oneness. These crucial questions underlie many of the beliefs and actions within the movement.
Traditional shamanism is clearly dualistic, though it has animistic elements, as well a belief in interconnectedness at some level. Humans, deities, and spirits are independent entities, and their relationships with each other often reflect worldly social interactions. Those relationships can sometimes be seen as a cosmic battle with evil in the form of dangerous spirits and witches. Core Shamanism, which is also dualistic in the sense that spirit and matter are distinct, does not stress the good/evil dichotomy of traditional shamanism, although that dichotomy is present. The emphasis in Core Shamanism is on helping and protecting one’s self and others. One of the prime rules is not to use shamanic knowledge to attack or harm others; that is sorcery and is forbidden. In advanced Core Shamanism, ways to guard against intentionally or unintentionally caused dangers are addressed.
This dualistic perspective contrasts with much of Neo-Shamanism, Neopaganism, and New Age, all of which have monistic or pantheistic approaches to reality. The universe is usually conceived of as friendly or benign; there is no dichotomy between good and evil. Another aspect of the contrast of traditional shamanism and Core Shamanism with NeoShamanism, Neo-Paganism, and New Age is epistemological. It concerns the source of authority. For traditional shamanism and Core Shamanism, knowledge and direction come from spirits. For the others, knowledge and direction come from “within,” from one’s higher self, inner voice, or inner wisdom. It should be noted, however, that within Neo-Shamanism, Neopaganism, and New Age there is a range of beliefs on these matters. In keeping with the individualistic stance, one’s personal epistemology may vary to some extent from generally held positions.
History
The two primary catalysts for modern shamanic spirituality are Carlos Castaneda and Michael Harner. Beginning in 1968, Castaneda wrote a series of books describing the beliefs and the magical practices of Don Juan, supposedly a Yaqui (of northern Mexico) brujo (sorcerer or witch). Particularly fascinating to readers were Don Juan’s journeys into alternate reality. Although the validity and authenticity of Don Juan and his adventures have come under severe questioning, and most knowledgeable people feel that Don Juan was a figment of Castaneda’s creative imagination, his works still make an impact on the Neo-Shamanism segment of modern shamanic spirituality.
Michael Harner is a professional anthropologist who conducted extensive research in shamanism and other aspects of the Conibo and Shuar (Jvaro) cultures of Amazonia in the late 1950s and 1960s and undertook further research among other societies that had shamans. He began to give workshops in Core Shamanism in the mid-1970s and published his definitive Way of the Shaman in 1980.
It was not long before a range of so-called teachers, medicine men, ersatz shamans, and others who supposedly had esoteric shamanic knowledge began to offer their versions of the new shamanism. Still, Core and Neo-Shaman-ism are the main forms of modern shamanic spirituality.
Both forms are leaderless, in the sense that there is no ongoing controlling presence of an individual; no one is a “guru” who dictates what one can or cannot do or believe. There are a few minor organizational structures around an individual who has created a specific method or ritual system (for example, Brant Se-cunda’s Dance of the Deer Foundation and Michael Harner’s Foundation for Shamanic Studies, mentioned below), but they are very limited in their controlling ability. Leaders in this movement are for the most part simply knowledgeable people who organize and teach workshops, lead pilgrimages, and help perpetuate the broad general character of the version of the movement they support.
Core Shamanism is a conservative, purist approach to shamanism. Neo-Shamanism uses metaphorical images and idealized concepts of shamanism, which are often joined with beliefs and diverse rituals that have little to do with tra
ditional shamanism. There are some areas of overlap between the two forms, but their foci are distinct. The leaders of Core and NeoShamanism work within their own system. Seekers are often more versatile (Townsend ms).
Core Shamanism
Michael Harner is the creator and remains the prime mover of Core Shamanism. It is an experiential method based on his ethnographic research, a method that distills the core elements that have real time depth and are found in traditional shamanism cross-culturally. It creates no additional mythology or theology, nor does it incorporate specific beliefs, ceremonials, or other aspects of any indigenous people’s culture, although specific ethnographic examples may be referred to as illustrations in teaching (Conton 2000; Harner 1980; Townsend 1999a, 1999b, ms). Consequently, it should not be accused of stealing the spiritual traditions of indigenous peoples. The method is taught in workshops given by Harner or those certified by him; the workshops teach both introductory and advanced methods.
The basis of Core Shamanism is the journey into alternate reality, through the stimulus of drumming. Drum beats vary between about 205 and 220 beats per minute according to the needs of the journeyer (Harner 1980). Hallucinogens are never used, and it is this drug-free aspect of attaining an altered state of consciousness that has made the method especially appealing. In alternate reality journeyers can contact their helping spirits as well as other spirits and the dead, explore the reaches of alternate reality, gain knowledge, and heal others with the assistance of spirits. Traditional shamans’ power, and the power of shamans trained in this method, lies in the ability to contact spirits and enlist those spirits to help them accomplish their goals (Townsend 1999b, 115).
Harner eschews becoming an authoritative guru and encourages seekers to discover their own paths through journeying and to learn what lies in alternate reality from the spirits (Townsend 1999b). The real teachers are those in alternate reality; he provides only a method of contacting them. For the conscientious Core Shamanism student, this approach provides a freedom to learn directly from spirits. At the same time, it opens up a freedom to diverge
from the pure Core Shamanism method and incorporate unrelated systems.
The journey differs from other methods of altering one’s state of consciousness. Loud rhythmic drumming strongly contrasts with quiet meditation, guided imagery, or chanting. Both Core Shamanism and traditional shamanism stress the reality of alternate reality and seeing in that reality. Meditation and other methods usually consider visions as some form of illusion or as originating in the mind of the seeker rather than actually existing in any alternate reality. There is considerably more interaction with spirits in Core and traditional shamanism. In meditative systems, if spirit illusions are dealt with at all they are considered unimportant or a nuisance (Townsend ms). Leilani Lewis (1991, 3; also Grimaldi 1997, 4—9) observes that the journeyer sets the objective of the journey; the journeyer is not guided or “pre-programmed” by an instructor. The teachers one meets in alternate reality are actual spirits, not one’s “inner self.”
As in traditional shamanism, the belief is that illness is caused by the loss of a spirit helper (such a helper being essential if one is to survive), by soul loss, or by spirit intrusion. It is the healer’s job to travel to alternate reality to retrieve the patient’s spirit helper or lost soul and return it. If the problem is intrusion, the healer must go into alternate reality in order to determine the cause and then remove it, usually by the traditional shamanic method of sucking out the object and disposing of it. Core Shamanism and traditional healing techniques require considerable effort and focus (Harner 1973, 1980; Grimaldi 1997; Townsend 1997a).
In 1985 Harner established a nonprofit educational Foundation for Shamanic Studies. With proceeds from workshops and memberships, the foundation sponsors basic and applied shamanic research in areas where traditional shamanism is threatened. The goals are to salvage shamanic knowledge before it disappears, and where possible assist existing shamans in the preservation of their traditions. With regard to the latter, some shamans in Siberian, Native American, Inuit, Saami (Lapps), Nepalese and other societies have petitioned the foundation to help them to regain and perpetuate their systems. While it is unlikely that lost or fading traditions can be regained in their entirety, reviving and develop
ing what remains can also contribute to a resurgence of ethnic pride and meaning (Townsend 1999a, ms).
While active face-to-face “groups” are not a formal part of Core Shamanism, small drumming circles do exist almost anywhere Core Shamanism is taught. These groups are autonomous, and although they are sanctioned and encouraged by Harner and his foundation, the foundation does not control them. People who have taken at least the introductory course may meet weekly or once or twice a month for journeying using drums and for healing. Some have considerable time depth, having been active for a decade. In 2000, foundation-recognized drumming circles existed in thirty states in the United States, with the east and west coasts having the largest number. Drumming circles also existed in six Canadian provinces, Argentina, Belgium, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Netherlands, Scotland, Sweden, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand (Conton 2000; Shamanism 2000: 94—96). In the Germanic countries in 2001 there were fifteen to twenty drumming circles in Austria, ten in Germany, and fifteen in Switzerland (Harner, personal communication, August 2, 2001).
Some people take Core Shamanism workshops and remain completely within that system. Others also become involved in diverse activities and move toward some version of Neo-Shamanism or Neopaganism. In that case the Core Shamanism method then becomes merely one of many elements employed (Townsend 1999a, 225).
Neo-Shamanism
The amorphous, eclectic nature of NeoShamanism makes it difficult to characterize. In contrast with Core Shamanism, there is more emphasis on rituals, other often nonshamanic activities, and a tendency to incorporate aspects of Neo-paganism and aspects of New Age. Authoritative sources are diffuse. Castaneda never taught, except to a small group near the end of his life, but many have been influenced by his books. Other sources of inspiration are workshops, the Internet, and a plethora of literature. Although Neo-Shamanism draws from some traditional shamanism, it emphasizes Western idealized and metaphorical images of the shaman as an all-wise hierophant, a mystic, a
guardian of the earth. The shaman exists within a broader idealized unchanging “primitive” or “native” ethos. These important symbols, “nature,” the “native,” and the “primitive,” exist within the old ideology of romanticism, which encourages searching for spiritual guidelines among indigenous peoples, especially Native North Americans (Townsend 1999a, 228; ms). In contrast to practitioners of Core Shamanism, Neo-Shamans tend to rely on calling spirits to them rather than undertaking journeys to spirits in the spirit world. This approach reflects Neo-Shamanism’s greater involvement with real or assumed Native American cultural systems. Healing of one’s self or others may be undertaken. Healers may use rituals or other techniques in addition to or instead of traveling into alternate reality.
A variety of pseudoindigenous “shamans,” “medicine men,” and others claiming access to esoteric knowledge have become more active recently, conducting workshops or giving talks. Another recent prominent feature is the pilgrimage in which a group of seekers is led to “points of power” or native villages. There they perform “shamanic” rituals, hoping to gain more spiritual empowerment and perhaps get in touch with their “heart’s spirit.” Some of these activities take on an element of New Age practice. Pilgrimage destinations include Mount Shasta in California, the southwest United States, Mexico, Hawaii, China, Tibet, Nepal, Alaska, and southern France.
Related to the pilgrimage is the use of psychoactive compounds to induce altered states. Recently some Neo-Shamans have begun to travel to the Amazonian area, either on their own or as part of a pilgrimage led by someone claiming to be a shaman. There they experiment with various hallucinogens, including ayahuasca (yaje), amanita muscaria mushrooms, and San Pedro cactus. Concerns have been expressed regarding the dangers of the uninformed use of such drugs, particularly in the hands of ersatz shamans (Townsend 1999a, 228—229; see the journal called Shamans Drum for papers addressing the phenomenon).
Modern Shamanic Spirituality
Modern shamanic spirituality as a whole is a democratic movement; authority is vested in each individual because sacred knowledge is
held to be experiential, not doctrinal. Individuals can create personal belief systems based on information gained from spirits during journeys and from workshops, literature, and other sources. In a movement such as modern shamanic spirituality, it would be almost impossible to limit access to sacred knowledge because of the variety of media and network information systems available, the individualistic nature of the movement, and the fluid relationships between leaders and seekers (Townsend 1999b, 117).
There is a continuum in modern shamanic spirituality from the deeply sincere to the dabbler who searches for the newest esoteric fad. “Traditionalists” adhere to Core Shamanism with minimal additions. “Modernists” blend Core and Neo-Shamanism, some elements of traditional shamanism, and additions from other healing and spiritual practitioners. Rather than trying to follow traditional shamanic systems closely, modernists focus on applying an idealized, often invented, form of shamanism to daily life and to psychotherapy. At the far end of the continuum, “Eclectics,” the more extreme segment of Neo-Shamanism, glorify the idealized “native” and “shaman” and integrate a range of unrelated, often invented rituals and beliefs not related to shamanism such as chakras, astrology, and crystal healing. Some eclectics consider themselves to be shamans; some, such as artists or other “creative” individuals, suddenly realize they are shamans, although they were not previously aware of it. Included in the eclectics are the “wanna-bes”—those who “want to be” In-dian—who try to involve themselves in indigenous cultures, enjoy dressing up like idealized Indians, and take on pseudo-Indian names such as Running Fawn or Brave Wolf. These practices raise the ire of the native people. These last two types may also include aspects of Neopaganism in their world view (Townsend 1999a, 225; ms).
Nonviolent nativistic, eschatological, apocalyptic, and millennial themes (Townsend 1984) appear in modern shamanic spirituality, as they do in Neopaganism. Humans and the earth are in grave danger. This is partly due to the West’s loss of transcendent awareness and loss of connection with nature and the spirit world. These crises must be dealt with quickly, or there will be a catastrophe. “Shamanic cultures” have re
tained this connection and are the keepers of the mystical knowledge that will prevent catastrophe and create a saner world. Part of the mission of modern shamanic spirituality is to prevent the world’s destruction by rekindling the lost spiritual awareness. This mission entails learning from indigenous people and carrying on activities in the spirit world that will save our material world (Townsend 1999b, 116— 117; ms). The current global warming fears and other environmental problems have added fuel to this concern.
Spread of Core and Neo-Shamanism
In the past people who held beliefs that deviated from the accepted norm gave up their beliefs, kept quiet, or were ostracized. They might retain their beliefs if they found others nearby who shared them. Today there is more openness to deviant beliefs, and face-to-face verification of beliefs is not necessary. Modern shamanic spirituality is a fluid network. One can gain access to new beliefs, to a virtual community, and to belief verification through a plethora of books, magazines, specialty bookstores, radio and television programs, workshops, pilgrimages, and most recently and importantly, the Internet. Web sites provide information, chat groups, e-mail, and lists to which one subscribes in order to discuss relevant issues, rather than simply being on the receiving end. Strong cyber-friendships are sometimes formed. The Internet reaches throughout the world, and so supports the globalization of the movement, which appears to be expanding exponentially (Townsend 1997b). Although the development of both Core and Neo-Shamanism seems to have initially stemmed from North America, as a result of all these factors they have rapidly spread through much of the First World.
In Europe, especially in Germany, a form of “Scientific Neopaganism” and Nordic pagan revivalism has been evident since at least the 1920s (Poewe 1999). In the last thirty years, partly from a desire to find a spiritual heritage in one’s own culture and partly because of indigenous people’s anger at real or assumed usurping of their traditions, there has been a rise in the search for European shamanic traditions, notably Nordic and, most recently, Celtic.
Harner began his European teaching of Core Shamanism in Germany in 1978 and continued his personal activities there until 1985. Core Shamanism actively continues in the Germanic countries today (Harner, personal communication, August 2, 2001).
During the middle 1980s some people claiming to be North American Native shamans or medicine men of various kinds traveled in Europe professing to teach “Native American wisdom.” The alleged medicine man, Rolling Thunder, who claimed to be Shoshone or Cherokee, held a seminar there. Another ersatz spiritual leader, Harley SwiftDeer (supposedly of Cherokee and Irish heritage) who came to Europe about 1984, seems to have developed a particularly large following, which has continued through 1997 (Kehoe 1990, 201; Lindquist 1997, 25—48). These people purveyed pseudo-Native American rituals such as sweet grass, the Sun Dance, and other conglomerations of pieces of Native American rituals and newly invented ones.
In Scandinavia, especially Sweden, the desire to integrate Nordic shamanism with Core and Neo-Shamanism has been especially strong. The Swedish Association for Nordic Shaman-ism—Yggdrasil (world tree)—was created in the mid-1970s and has published its magazine Gimle since 1976. The first issue briefly commented on a Nordic kind of shamanism and gave a complete list of Castaneda’s books. Early issues also included information on non-shamanic traditions, including Druidism, the Arthurian legend, Hinduism, Yoga, and Tantra. In 1982 Yggdrasil became more directly associated with Nordic shamanism, especially the Nordic seid, or sejd, a seance used for divination and problem solving. No journeys to alternate reality were undertaken until Michael Harner visited in 1983 (Lindquist 1997, 23, 29—31, 131-174). In 1986 his representative in Denmark, Jonathan Horwitz, began teaching and has been particularly influential. In 1993 Horwitz’s association with Harner was severed, and he has continued to teach on his own (Lindquist 1997; Harner personal communication, August 2, 2001). Presumably he still adheres to much of Core Shamanism.
Core and Neo-Shamanism manifest differently in Europe than in North America. Boundaries between the two seem blurred in Europe. Some take Core Shamanism work
shops and continue within that movement, but it appears that there is a greater tendency in Europe to combine Neo-Shamanic systems, Nordic or Celtic “shamanism,” and Neopaganism. Then the blend is lumped under the rubric of Neo-Shamanism. Of course, there is a strong feeling among the North American Core-shaman participants (and especially Michael Harner) that there are major distinctions to be drawn; Core shamans do not want to be classed with the larger, more amorphous Neo-Shaman movement or other spiritual forms in North America or in Europe.
One of the distinctions between North American and European, particularly Swedish, activities is the greater degree of face-to-face interaction in the latter. In North America, Core shamans tend to work independently or to participate in small drumming circles, usually of about eight or ten, discussed above. In Sweden, however, there seems to be a tendency to form some more formal groups.
For most Swedes, Core Shamanism, particularly the journey, is one of the tools used; then rituals are added, including annual Nordic celebrations and practices presumed to be Native North American, such as sweat lodges, sun dances, vision quests, and so on. The practitioners join with others to create local communities and establish sacred localities within a local shamanic cultural milieu (Lindquist 1997; Harner personal communication, May 17, 2001). Harner agrees that it is likely that the Scandinavian version of shamanism is not pure Core Shamanism as he teaches it but is a merging of Nordic mythology and rituals with some input from the itinerant alleged Native North American medicine men who traveled in Europe (Harner personal communication, August 2, 2001).
Unfortunately the ersatz teachers of “authentic” Native American shamanism and their ritual and belief systems have made a major impression on not only Europeans but also North Americans. This influence has created tremendous anger among many Native Americans. Further, some of these inventions have found their way back to Native people, who at times take them to be “real,” “traditional” Native spirituality with considerable time depth. There is a danger that these inventions may become fixed in the literature as valid ancient traditional Native spirituality rather than recent
inventions, a few of which may hold some value for the Native people (Townsend 1999a).
Globalization
U.S. citizens still make up the majority of practitioners of shamanic spirituality, although precise numbers are almost impossible to obtain. Membership lists of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies may give some idea of the numbers of those in various geographical areas who are deeply involved. Of a total of 1,696 individuals who volunteered to allow their names to be listed on the 1994 membership list, 86 percent were Americans and 13 percent were from the rest of the world (Canada, Mexico and Central America, South America, Europe, Middle East, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand). A tentative estimate based on a small sample from one shamanism Internet list, which draws from Neoshamans as well as Core shamans, indicates that non-Americans represent about 25—28 percent of the active list participants. The total number of subscribers to the Internet list (both participants and lurkers) is difficult to ascertain. Those who actively participate are probably only a fraction of those who subscribe to the list. Where nationality could be determined, countries represented on the list were the United States, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Britain, Russia, Portugal, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, and Argentina. There are many other lists, chat rooms, and Internet sites, so these figures are only a very gross approximation (Townsend 1997b). Lindquist’s (1997, 288) guess is that there are perhaps between 200 and 300 people in Sweden with some involvement in what she calls Neo-Shamanism.
The globalization of shamanic spirituality is limited primarily to middle-class people of First World countries. Those who are not financially well-off, wherever they are, have little or no access to individualist or group new religious movements. Several factors restrict the involvement. Workshops do cost money, and English is the main language for written materials and the Internet. The Internet is expensive and not always available to people in Third and Fourth World countries. Globalization of belief systems is still a phenomenon of the economically well-off and residents of the First World (Townsend 1997b).
The Future of Core and Neo-Shamanism There are threats to the survival of both Core and Neo-Shamanism. As more and more people become involved throughout the world there is the danger that there will be more grafting of beliefs and rituals that are borrowed from other systems or invented outright. Another threat to the movement is the propensity of some practitioners of Neo-Shamanism to put forth as authentic ancient traditional beliefs and rituals of Native Americans and other indigenous people that are in fact recently invented and miscellaneous fragments of systems; this deception is practiced for notoriety and profit by a few ersatz spiritual leaders. When seekers begin to realize the shallowness of some of these leaders and their practices, it may jeopardize the movement as a whole.
Modern individualist movements have been heavily criticized by both laymen and academics as examples of the shallowness and superficiality of today’s supermarket society, which expects instant answers for profound epistemological questions and practices that require little effort. Although this assessment may be true in some cases, for the most part it is an unfair evaluation. Those who are involved in the individualist movements as a whole, especially shamanic spirituality and Neopaganism, are mature, middle-class, well-educated people, who may have families, and often are in positions of influence or power in society. These are the people who have the potential to bring about social change as well as changes in belief systems. There is a strong possibility that the leaderless individualist movement will persist and spread, at least in Western society, and become a catalyst for social and religious change much more powerful than any organized new religious movement can be. This development was predicted at the turn of the twentieth century by Ernst Troeltsch (1931). That it is becoming a global phenomenon among First World countries is already clear (Townsend 1988, 73, 81; 1997b; 1999b, 117-118).
Importantly, Core and Neo-Shamanism provide the potential for transcendent experiences. The experiential element can have a much more profound effect—a true knowing—on those seeking answers than detached intellectu-alizing or hearing about the experiences of others (Townsend 1988, 82). Finally, shamanic spirituality may represent a practical or folk re
ligion that focuses on producing important and desired transformations in people’s lives. The consequence for people involved is the critical element, rather than what the belief system asserts (Buchdahl 1977; Carter 1996; Townsend 1999a, 226).
Joan B. Townsend
See also: Art and Shamanism; “Celtic Shamanism”: Pagan Celtic Spirituality; Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Shamans; Drumming in Shamanistic Rituals; History of the Study of Shamanism; Neo-Shamanism in Germany; Nordic Shamanism; Paganism in Europe; Pilgrimage and Shamanism;
Russian Shamanism Today; Soul Retrieval; Tuvan Shamanism; Urban Shamanism
References and further reading:
Blain, Jenny. 2002. Nine (?) Worlds of Seid-Magic. London and New York: Routledge.
Brunton, Bill B. 1999. “Western Shamanism in a Cultural Context.” Pp. 231—239 in Proceedings of the International Congress: Shamanism and Other Indigenous Spiritual Beliefs and Practices. Vol. 5, pt. 2. Moscow: Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Brunton, Bill, ed. Shamanism. 2000. Mill Valley, CA: Journal of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies 13 (Fall/Winter), nos. 1, 2.
Buchdahl, David A. 1977. “The Science of Religion (and the Religion of Science).” American Anthropologist 79: 397—413.
Carter, Lewis F. 1996. “Introduction to the Issue of Authenticity.” Pp. ix-xvi in The Issue of Authenticity in the Study of Religions, vol. 6 of Religion and the Social Order.
Edited by Lewis F. Carter. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Castaneda, Carlos. 1968. The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. New York: Ballantine Books.
Conton, Leslie. 2000. “Contemporary Shamanisms: Neo-Shamanism, Core Shamanism, and Reflections on Contemporary Shamanic Practices in the Pacific Northwest.” Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness, April, at Tucson, Arizona.
Grimaldi, Susan. 1997. “Observations on Daniel Noel’s ’The Soul of Shamanism’: A Defense of Contemporary Shamanism and Michael Harner.” Shamans Drum 46: 4—9.
Harner, Michael J. 1973. “The Sound of Rushing Water.” Pp. 15—27 in Hallucinogens and Shamanism. Edited by Michael J. Harner. New York: Oxford University Press.
———. 1980. The Way of the Shaman: A Guide to Power and Healing. New York: Harper and Row.
Hoppal, Mihaly. 2000. Shaman Traditions in Transition. Budapest: International Society for Shamanistic Research.
Kehoe, Alice. 1990. “Primal Gaia: Primitivists and Plastic Medicine Men.” Pp. 194—209 in The Invented Indian: Cultural Fictions and Government Policies. Edited by James A. Clifton. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Lewis, Leilani. 1991. “Coming Out of the Closet as a Shamanic Practitioner.” Foundation for Shamanic Studies Newsletter 4, no.1: 12.
Lindquist, Galina. 1997. Shamanic Performances on the Urban Scene. Neo-Shamanism in Contemporary Sweden. Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology, 39. Stockholm: Stockholm University.
Poewe, Karla. 1999. “Scientific Neo-Paganism and the Extreme Right Then and Today: From Ludendorff’s Gotterkenntnis to Sigrid Hund’s Europas Eigene Religion.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 14, no. 3: 387—400.
Shamanism. 2000. Mill Valley, CA: Journal of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies 13 (Fall/Winter), nos. 1, 2.
Shaman’s Drum: A Journal of Experiential Shamanism and Spiritual Healing. Williams, OR: Cross-Cultural Shamanism Network.
Townsend, Joan B. 1984. “Anthropological Perspectives on New Religious Movements.” Pp. 137—151 in The Return of the Millennium. Edited by Joseph Bettis and S. K. Johannesen. Barrytown, NY: New ERA Books.
———. 1988. “Neo-Shamanism and the Modern Mystical Movement.” Pp. 73—83 in Shaman’s Path: Healing, Personal Growth and Empowerment. Edited by Gary Doore. Boston: Shambhala.
-------. 1997a. “Shamanism.” Pp. 429—469 in Anthropology of Religion: A Handbook. Edited by Stephen Glazier. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
———. 1997b. “The Globalization of NeoShamanism.” Paper presented at the meeting
of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, November 7—9, at San Diego, California.
———. 1999a. “Western Contemporary Core and Neo-Shamanism and the Interpenetration with Indigenous Societies.” Pp. 223—231 in Proceedings of the International Congress: Shamanism and Other Indigenous Spiritual Beliefs and Practices. Vol. 5, pt.2. Moscow: Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
———. 1999b. “Core Shaman and Neopagan Leaders of the Mystical Movement in Contemporary Society.” Dialogue and Alliance: A Journal of the International Religious Foundation 13, no.1: 100—122.
———. Manuscript in revision for publication. “Shamanic Spirituality: Core Shamanism and Neo-Shamanism in Contemporary Western Society.”
Troeltsch, Ernst. 1931. The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches. Volume 2. Translated by Olive Wyon. Halley Stewart Publications I. London: George Allen and Unwin. Original edition, Die Soziallehren der Christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen. 1911.
COSTUME, SHAMAN
Shamans in many cultures do not wear specific costumes as part of their ceremonial attire, although they may wear traditional tribal regalia, westernized dress, individual symbolic items such as masks, headdresses, rattles, or necklaces, or any combination of the above. However, highly specialized complete costumes for shamans exist in many of the parts of East Asia, where traditional shamanic practitioners have long used complete costumes as an important part of assisting, controlling, and expressing the ecstatic journey. Shamanic costumes in these instances are more than mere regalia to indicate tribal affiliation or office, and more than religious vestments that subsume the identity of the wearer into a mere representative of a religion. They are actively powerful magical tools in their own right, capable of assisting the shaman to complete a total internal and external transformation. The relationship between
the shaman and these specialized garments is closest to that which an actor in performance has with the expressive and transforming dress of theatrical costume, where the performer assumes another personality or acquires other personal attributes by the process of donning the costume and expressing the character of the being the costume represents.
In the practice still current today, a female Korean shaman (known as a mansin, or mu-dang) will, when conducting a kut (seance), don a series of robes, hats, and vests that are representative of the spirits of the ancestors she is possessed by in turn. All these spirit clothes are worn over the mansin’s main clothing, usually male in style, excepting in the rare case of a male shaman (paksu), who wears female base clothing (Covel 1983, 97). In both cases the base dress assists the shaman to subsume the identities of both sexes into one, encouraging spirits of both genders to possess the medium while in the ecstatic state.
As each spirit speaks, dances, or acts out through the mansin, she switches garments, since the spirits are thought to inhabit the robes. Certain outfits are associated with particular types of ancestor spirits, and the mansin’s voice, demeanor, and attitude change to reflect these spirit’s characters as she dons their dress. Spirits of great kings, generals, magistrates, mountain gods, and other regal spirits wear wide-sleeved red robes and tall hats (Kendall 1985, 6). A blue vest and broad-brimmed black hat will indicate a greedy government official, who is comically greedy even in the afterlife (Kendall 1985, 8). A yellow robe may be for a demanding spirit grandmother, while a yellow blouse and red skirt belong to a princess or maiden who is angry because she died before marriage or before having a child. Children who died before they became adults cry and demand sweets, and are indicated by tying a child’s robes to the belt of the medium. Many other sorts of spirits are also indicated by traditional garments appropriate to their status during life. These spirit robes and headdresses are stored in the mansin’s shrine, and a mansin’s patrons who wish a particular spirit’s protection for their family will bring offerings of food, cloth, or money to the shrine as offerings to the spirits. A woman wishing particular attention for her family from a spirit may even give the spirit a new or a finer robe on which she em-
A Tibetan shaman sports a colorful headdress worn during shamanic seance. Tashiparkhel Tibetan camp, Pokhara, Nepal, 1989. (Alison Wright/Corbis)
broiders her name, or a spirit during the performance of the kut may demand such a robe in order to agree to intercede in human affairs (Kendall 1985, 134-135).
Siberian shaman costumes are quite different from this, and most typically consist of a single highly embellished outfit that has many magical attributes that assist the shaman to contact helpful spirits, ward away evil ones, and safely make journeys to and from other worlds. Much has been written of Siberian shaman costumes since they first caught the imagination of Russian and European observers in the eighteenth century, and many examples of nineteenth- and twentieth-century costumes survive in museum collections around the world, but what is perhaps most notable about them is that no two are ever closely alike, as each was the creation of the individual shaman who wore it (Hutton 2001, 80-81). This was true when Johann-Gottlieb Georgi first tried to draw the dress of the inhabitants of Russia in 1776, and found that he had to illustrate eight completely different styles of
shaman’s costumes to show what he had seen in just a few regions (Flaherty 1992, 75). As in Korea, shaman clothing among the Siberian groups of Yukagir, Koryak, Itelmen, and Evenk had attributes of the clothing of the opposite sex (Serov 1988, 248-249), but unlike in Korea this was not a hard and fast rule, but a matter of local custom and individual inspiration. Higher-level shamans in the Nganasan and Karagas Regions sometimes had multiple costumes dedicated to various types of rituals, with more dangerous rituals requiring more elaborate costumes for protection, but again, the dress required for each level was not standardized in any way.
Certain symbols and attachments, such as fringes, mirrors, bells and other metal ornaments, skeletal markings, and others, reoccur on many different costumes from a broad range of locations, but the meanings and powers ascribed to them vary considerably, not only from location to location, but from shaman to shaman. The probable reason for this is that
while making the costume is part of the shaman’s apprenticeship, it is also a continuing work throughout the shaman’s life. If the shaman has a mentor, or an ancestor who was a shaman, the mentor may give direction to the student on how to begin making the costume, or the ancestor may have bequeathed metal ornaments to the family (Dolgikh 1978, 70, 73). These influences help to continue traditions that often make costumes produced in certain areas have many similar features. However, the shamans also seek for ideas directly from the spirits who help them, and many costume features are intended to physically represent attributes of animals that the shaman has been allowed by his animal spirits to acquire for use in the other worlds. Shamans in these cultures are said to gain power through the process of making and wearing the costume, and the reverse is also true: There is a recorded incident in the eighteenth century of a Tungus shaman who lost all his powers after a group of professors from the West stole his costume (Flaherty 1992, 73).
Typical metal attachments may include iron “antlers” affixed to the body of the garment, or, more usually, to the headdress. In images from the eighteenth century, these sometimes appear to have been made from actual antlers. Other headdresses have stylized hornlike decorations of stuffed leather, feathers and fur, which appear to echo the antler motif; still others omit the horns entirely. Yenissei shamans explained that the antlers on their costumes signify a relation to a deer spirit who helps one run swiftly in the Underworld (Lommel 1967, 108); others equated the deer imagery with an ability to insure good deer hunting. Metal disk “mirrors” are another common feature found on a majority of Siberian, as well as Mongolian and Northern Chinese, shaman costumes. The number of these disks varies considerably, their placement also varies, and their composition may be either brass or iron. Nganasan shamans when interviewed have described them as variously being there “to break the ice” when going to the Lower World of the dead (Dolgikh 1978, 70), or more simply being there “for beauty” (Graceva 1978, 82). In the Goldi culture of the Amur River the mirror is used to see wandering spirits and to hold helpful spirits (Vasttokas 1977, 98). In other regions they are thought to drive off evil spirits who fear their
own reflection, or are used like armor to protect the navel or heart from attack by hostile spirits.
Most, though not all, costumes are also embellished with many iron amulets that make noise; they may be in abstract shapes or stylized forms representing boats, faces, fish, animals, snakes, breasts, six-fingered hands, or humans. The earliest Western account of a Siberian shaman’s headdress in 1557 described the face as covered by a piece of a shirt of mail, with fish and animal teeth and small bones hanging on it (Hutton 2001, 30). Occasionally metal “found objects” were also included, as is the case with some garments now in the Kunstkamera Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in St. Petersburg, which have old horse brasses, or, in another case, an old brass Soviet army button, added to the mix of metal amulets. Homemade metal noisemaking cones are also common, while further south old trade bells are often also used. Iron amulets are thought to repel hostile spirits, due to the noise created by the blacksmith during their manufacture (Lommel 1967, 125), as well as the noise they make while dancing. Bells are equated with living beings who call good spirits with their ringing (Lommel 1967, 125). Metal plates are also often attached in a pattern resembling a skeletal structure, while other garments trace similar patterns using couched, sacred white throat fur from the skin of a wild reindeer. Further south, these patterns are often repeated in stitched-on patches of fabric. Some have equated the metal “bones” with the bones of the shaman’s spirit animal (Lommel 1967, 125), others with the shaman’s own bones (Vasttokas 1977, 98), while others have identified it as armor against evil (Halifax 1982).
Siberian shamans also have many soft attachments to their garments, the most common being fringes made of fur, leather, fabric or even beads. Fringe, though it is the broad term most used to describe these dangling pieces, conveys an overly generalized meaning; in fact they are usually individually sewn on strings, or tassels, or bundles of strings. Very often these fringes are attached to the headpiece and used to cover the face, which for the protection of the shaman must be concealed in the world of the dead (Lommel 1967, 110). If a fringe does not cover the face, the face may be painted black, covered in a limited-vision
A tribesman from Northern Siberia, a Tungus Shaman, holding his drum and wearing traditional costume, ca. 1890.
(Bettmann/Corbis)
mask, or simply covered with a handkerchief or scrap of cloth to afford the same protection. Fringes are also frequently attached to the body garment in great profusion, especially in the case of shamans whose main animal spirit is a bird; the fringes on the arms of the garment allow the wearer to fly to the other world with the aid of the animal spirit. Fringe strings of leather or fabric are also used to represent helper snake spirits, especially by the Tuvan shamans, and may include tiny carefully sewn bead eyes on each individual snake of the fringe (Djakonova 1978, 160—161, 164).
Another typical feature in areas where hallucinogenic mushrooms are used during trance is a strong back strap, which is sometimes tied to a tree, or held by an assistant, to symbolically hold the shaman so that he can be pulled back to the world of the living, and, on a more practical level, to hold him up from falling over and being injured while in the trance state. Whole
pelts of small animals may also be attached, or bundles of fur from larger animals, as a way of sympathetically assisting in the hunting of those animals (Dolgikh 1978, 69, 74), or symbolizing individual animal helper spirits. Patches of fur or fabric are also sometimes attached in the shape of people, or crosses indicating bird spirits (Serov 1988, 241). The earliest complete Siberian shaman’s outfit still surviving is from the 1780s Tungus people and is now housed in the Gottingen University Museum (Flaherty 1992, 170, 171). It has many small stuffed human dolls with brass face masks attached, as well as a variety of other amulets and stuffed objects. Shamans’ garments also may simply have painted or line-drawn figures and images: A Goldi shaman dress from the Amur River region of southern Siberia in 1900 is entirely covered with elaborately drawn images of the tree of life, humans, animals, plants, and abstract images, with only a cone bell belt and a single breast mirror as dimensional accessories (Vasttokas 1977, 98—104).
Further south, where shamanism has been incorporated into Mongolian, Chinese, Nepalese, Tibetan and other Buddhist traditions, shaman costumes sometimes blend the vestments of Buddhist priests with some of the elements seen in Siberian practice, or use these elements over items of their modern or traditional national dress. Like all religious practice in the region, the Chinese Communist government has tried repressing shamanism, but unlike the Soviets, there was no great push to record and document the practice before attempting to wipe it out. The result is that in these areas little has been written on the subject, so most conclusions must be drawn from limited photographic evidence. Nepalese shamans working now wear multiple belts, necklaces, and baldrics of assorted bells and cowry shells over the traditional dress of the region, as well as a special headdress of bundled tail feathers of mountain pheasants (Hitchcock 1977, 42—48). Lama-shamans of Tibet and China, where shamanism has long been incorporated into the Buddhist religion, wore especially elaborately decorated priestly vestments, and items like protective face-covering fringes or flaps, breast mirror disks, and bell belts. Many of these ensembles also had an unexplained feature borrowed from Chinese theater: a series of flags strapped to the back of the garment, which on
stage signify a legendary general and his army, with each flag representing a troop of soldiers at his command. Like the bundled snake spirits of the Tuvans, these flags may have represented armies of good spirits, or like the mansin’s red robes in Korea, may have been a way for the shaman to channel a heroic general of the past to rout out evil spirits in the afterlife, as he routed out enemy soldiers in life.
Tara Maginnis
See also: Chepang Shamanism; Deer Imagery and Shamanism; Dramatic Performance in Shamanism; Evenki Shamanism; Finno-Ugric Shamanism; Gender in Shamanism; Khakass Shamanism; Korean Shamanism; Tuvan Shamanism
References and further reading:
Covel, Alan Carter. 1983. Ecstasy: Shamanism
in Korea. Elizabeth, NJ: Hollym International.
Dioszegi, V. 1996. “The Problem of the Ethnic Homogeneity of Tofa (Karagas) Shamanism.” Pp. 179—235 in Folk Beliefs and Shamanistic Traditions in Siberia. Edited by Vilmos Dioszegi and Mihaly Hoppal. Budapest: Akademia Kiado.
Djakonova, P. 1978. “The Vestments and Paraphernalia of a Tuva Shamaness.” Pp. 68—78 in Shamanism in Siberia. Edited by Vilmos Dioszegi and Mihaly Hoppal.
Budapest: Akademia Kiado.
Dolgikh, B. O. 1978. “Nganasan Shaman Drums and Costumes.” Pp. 68—78 in Shamanism in Siberia. Edited by Vilmos Dioszegi and Mihaly Hoppal. Budapest: Akademia Kiado.
Flaherty, Gloria. 1992. Shamanism and the Eighteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Graceva, G. N. 1978. “ A Nganasan Shaman Costume.” Pp. 79—87 in Shamanism in Siberia. Edited by Vilmos Dioszegi and Mihaly Hoppal. Budapest: Akademia Kiado.
Halifax, Joan. 1982. Shaman: The Wounded Healer. New York: Crossroad.
Hitchcock, John T. 1977. “A Nepali Shaman’s Performance as Theatre.” Pp. 42-48 in Stones, Bones, and Skin: Ritual and Shamanic Art. Edited by Anne Trueblood Brodzky. Toronto: Society for Art.
Hutton, Ronald. 1993. The Shamans of Siberia. Glastonbury: Isle of Avalon Press.
———. 2001. Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination. London: Hambledon and London.
Illinois State Museum, “Journey to Other Worlds: Siberian Collections from the Russian Museum of Ethnography.” http://museum.state.il.us/exhibits/changing/ journey/objects/ (cited October 17, 2002).
Kendall, Laurel. 1985. Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits. Honolulu: University of Hawaii.
Lommel, Andreas. 1967. Shamanism: The Beginnings of Art. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Serov, S. Ia. 1988. “Guardians and Spirit Masters of Siberia.” Pp. 241—255 in Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska. Edited by Fitzhugh and Aron Crowell. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Vasttokas, Joan M. 1977. “The Shamanic Tree of Life.” Pp. 93—177 in Stones, Bones, and Skin; Ritual and Shamanic Art. Edited by Anne Trueblood Brodzky. Toronto: Society for Art.
CROSS-CULTURAL
PERSPECTIVES ON SHAMANS
The concept of the shaman has been problematic. Central topics of contention are whether shamanism is specific to particular cultures (e.g., Paleosiberian), a human universal, or a widely distributed cross-cultural phenomenon. Underlying issues are whether the concept of the shaman is strictly emic (related to specific cultures), or whether shamanism constitutes an etic (transculturally valid) construct. Cross-cultural investigations establish the etic nature of shamanism and empirically establish characteristics of shamans. These studies differentiate shamans from other shamanistic healers, practitioners who use altered states of consciousness (ASC) in community rituals involving interaction with spirits. The relationship of different types of shamanistic healers to subsistence patterns and social and political characteristics provides evidence of the evolutionary transformation of a hunter-gatherer shamanism into other types of healing practitioners.
Definitional vs. Cross-Cultural Approaches
Specification of the nature of shamanism has been problematic because of the lack of systematic cross-cultural investigations of shamans and their characteristics. The term shaman has been used to refer to a wide range of magico-religious practitioners, often with the implicit presumption of shared characteristics. Although some researchers have specified what they viewed as the characteristics of shamans (e.g., Eliade 1989; Hultkrantz 1973; Halifax 1979; Townsend 1997), many use the term without explicating the commonalities or universals of shamanism. Purported universals of shamanism are generally based upon a haphazard synthesis of data from select cultures. Others have employed a subjective definitional approach, specifying the particular characteristics they consider to define the shaman (e.g., see Townsend 1997). These arbitrary definitional approaches cannot establish the characteristics of a shaman nor address cross-cultural variation in shamanistic practices. A cross-cultural or holocultural method is necessary to answer these questions regarding the universality of shamans and their characteristics.
A Cross-Cultural Study of Shamanism
An empirical determination of the etic status of shamans and their characteristics is provided by a cross-cultural research project on magico-reli-gious practitioners (Winkelman 1986a, 1992; see Winkelman and White 1987 for data). This study was based on a forty-seven-society subset of the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, which is representative of the geographic, social, and cultural regions of the world, and a time span of approximately 4,000 years. This study individually assessed each of the culturally recognized magico-religious roles, coding data on 117 different practitioner types. Those culturally recognized positions involving interaction with supernatural entities or supernatural power were assessed in terms of several hundred descriptive variables developed from an emic perspective, as described in the ethnographic literature. These covered a wide range of characteristics, including selection and training procedures, procedures for inducing altered states of consciousness and characteristics of those
states, sources of power, relationships to spirits, the social context of and motives for professional activities, economic and sociopolitical powers, and various aspects of their healing, divination, malevolent acts, propitiation, and other ritual activities.
Statistical analysis of these cross-cultural data permitted empirical determination of the similarities in practitioners from diverse societies. These empirical similarities provided a basis for forming groups representing types of practitioners that have cross-cultural validity. A central question was the existence across societies of practitioners associated with the classic characteristics of shamanism. Quantitative assessment of shared characteristics provided the basis for answering this question, and determining different etic types of practitioners based upon their similarities (for methods and analysis, see Winkelman 1986a, 1992). The practitioner types derived from cluster analyses were subjected to independent validation that revealed interrelated and distinct types of practitioners. These empirically derived groups have been labeled with commonly used terms: shaman, shaman/healer, healer, medium, priest, and sor-cerer/witch.
These cross-cultural findings establish the etic status of shamans and other types of magico-religious practitioners. Practitioners from different societies and different regions of the world who belong to the same type are more similar to each other than they are to geographically more proximate practitioners, including other practitioners in the same culture and region. These findings include an empirically derived type of magico-religious healers that possesses the classic characteristics of the shaman. Some magico-religious practitioners labeled shamans by ethnographers have characteristics significantly different from those associated with the empirically derived type labeled shamans.
A differentiation of shamanistic practices was also proposed by Siikala (1978), who characterized Siberian shamanism as including four types: small-group shamans, independent professional shamans, clan shamans, and territorial professional shamans. She postulated the prevalence of small-group shamans in highly nomadic groups and independent professional shamans in societies without hierarchical control. Clan and territorial professional shamans
she saw as occurring in more complex groups. Winkelman’s cross-cultural study included the Kazak, a group found in the region where Si-ikala pointed to the predominance of what she called territorial professional shamanism. The practitioner from the Kazak (the baqca) was not empirically classified as a shaman, but rather as another type of shamanistic healer, a medium.
Healing practitioners found in Eurasia, the Americas, and Africa are more similar to one another than they are to other magico-religious practitioners in the same regions. This similarity is more relevant than geographical location or definitions, and indicates that the term shaman should be used on the basis of empirically shared characteristics. Winkelman’s cross-cultural findings suggest restricting the use of the term shaman to refer to healers of huntergatherer and other simple societies who are trained through altered states of consciousness for healing and divination, as well as sharing other characteristics discussed below. These shamans are distinguished from other types of shamanistic healers (mediums, healers, and shaman/healers) in more complex societies who also use altered states of consciousness for healing, but have different characteristics.
Shamans
Empirical research found the group called shamans were found in societies around the world, with the exception of the region around the Mediterranean; this absence reflects the lack of hunter-gatherer societies from this region in the sample. Shamans were found throughout the world, but survive in only a few places in modern societies. For example, in the formal cross-cultural analyses, shamans found in the modern world included the !Kung n/um kxoa-si, the Chukchee ene nilit, and the Jivaro wishinyu. Societies with shamans are predicted by nomadic residence patterns and political integration limited to local community, but not by diffusion, indicating the role of shaman had an independent origin in each society. The healing practitioners empirically clustered in the group labeled shaman have characteristics emphasized by Eliade—using ecstasy to interact with the spirit world on behalf of the community. These shamans are charismatic political leaders in hunter-gatherer and simple
pastoral or agricultural societies, where political integration is limited to the local community. Shamans’ ecstasy, or altered state of consciousness, is central to their professional training and activities of divination, prophecy, diagnosis, and healing. Shamans also led raiding parties, organized communal hunts, and decided group movement. Shamans engage in activities on behalf of a client, but generally with the entire local community (the band) participating. Shamans also may engage in malevolent magical acts designed to harm others. They may attack enemies of the group, and they are sometimes suspected of killing patients who died.
Shamans are often from families with a long history of shamanic practice. In most cultures, shamans are predominantly males; however, most cultures also allow females to become shamans, but typically limit their practice to before or after childbearing years (Winkelman 1992). The selection of a shaman might result from the desires of a deceased shamanic relative who provides spirit allies, but anyone could become a shaman who is selected by the spirits, undergoes training, and is successful in practice. Shamans are selected through a variety of procedures, including involuntary visions, receiving signs from spirits, and serious illness. These spontaneous experiences are followed by deliberately induced altered states of consciousness, during which shamans acquire spirit allies, particularly animal spirits. Animals are central to shamans’ powers; shamans are believed to transform themselves into animals and have them carry out activities.
Shamanic training involves induction of altered states of consciousness and seeking contact with the spirits, often an extension of vision quest experiences undertaken by the entire population (or all males) as a part of adult development. Shamans’ altered states of consciousness are induced through a variety of procedures: auditory driving (e.g., drumming and chanting); fasting and water deprivation; exposure to painful austerities and temperature extremes; extensive exertion from drumming and dancing; hallucinogens and other drugs; and sleep, social, and sensory deprivation. Shamans’ altered states of consciousness are generally labeled as involving soul flight and journeys to the spirit worlds, and they are usually not possessed by spirits. A characteristic feature of shamans’ altered states of consciousness is a vi
sionary experience during which they contact the spirit world.
The shamanic ritual was typically an allnight activity in which the entire community participated. The shamans’ chanting, singing, dancing, and enactments brought the community into a dramatic encounter with the spirit world. Central to shamanic therapy is soul recovery, which involves soul journeys to do battle with terrifying spirits to rescue the patient’s soul. Soul loss has been characterized as the loss of, or injury to, personal essence, manifested in disharmony in life and feelings of disconnectedness with others (Achterberg 1985). Soul recovery restores a sense of identity and emotional well-being, balancing and transforming self. Therapeutic processes involve community participation, healing through enhancing social bonding processes, as well as other symbolic processes characteristic of the shamanistic healers (see below). Other aspects of shamanic therapeutics involve removal of afflicting spirits or objects. A variety of physical healing techniques are also used: herbs, massage, and cleansings (Winkelman and Winkelman 1991).
Initiatory Crises, Death-and-Rebirth, and Psychological Status
Adoption of the shamanic role is often motivated by a psychological crisis, an initiatory period characterized by illness or insanity provoked by the afflictions of spirits. This crisis generally leads to a death-and-rebirth experience involving the dismemberment and reconstruction of the initiate’s body that imbues them with powers. It might occur spontaneously, during an initiatory crisis, or during an active engagement in a vision quest. The death-and-rebirth experience begins with attacks by spirits, which cause death; this is generally followed by descent to the Lower World, where spirits may destroy the victim’s body, typified by total dismemberment. The initiate’s body is then reconstructed with the addition of spirit allies, which provide power, and the individual is reborn.
These initiatory experiences and other shamanic altered states of consciousness have been characterized as pathological, as manifestations of neurosis, psychosis, hysteria, and epilepsy. These attributions largely reflect misunderstandings, although some cultures have
considered these experiences as illness. The difference is that in the shamanic context, the expectation is that these experiences are to be resolved as a part of professional development. The shaman’s initiatory crises and death-and-rebirth experiences are not schizophrenia or other pathologies (Noll 1983), but a temporary period of emotional turmoil and psychological distress.
The shamanic crisis is a period of psychological deconstruction manifested in natural symbolic forms of self-reference. The death-and-rebirth experiences reflect processes of selftransformation that occur under conditions of overwhelming stress, resulting in the fragmentation of the conscious ego from the consequences of psychological conflict. Dismemberment experiences are autosymbolic images of the disintegration of one’s own psychological structures; the inability of the psyche to maintain its integrity is experienced symbolically as death. The rebirth cycle reflects the reformation of ego and self, a psychological reorganization guided by innate drives toward holism and integration (Laughlin, McManus, and d’Aquili 1992). Shamanic development involves the ritual and symbolic manipulation of self and neurological structures to restructure the ego, attachments, affect, and other psychodynamic processes, providing the basis for individuation and self-actualization. These changes produce a new level of identity and consciousness, a self-transformation at the basis of the exceptional health of shamans.
Although the shamanic initiatory crises may involve pathological conditions, the claim that altered states of consciousness of shamans are inherently similar to pathological states is not justified. Shamanic altered states of consciousness have significant differences in their voluntary nature and the deliberate actions taken to induce them, conditions distinct from the involuntary conditions experienced by persons suffering from psychopathology. Noll’s (1983) analysis of shamanic states and schizophrenia reject arguments that shamans manifest pathogenic personality traits of acute schizophrenia. Shamanic altered states of consciousness differ from schizophrenia in that shamans enter altered states of consciousness deliberately; they do not lose their social interaction and communication skills; and they are able to discriminate between shamanic experiences and experiences of every
day life. The experiential qualities of shamanic altered states of consciousness also differ sharply from those of schizophrenia, with shamanic hallucinatory experiences characterized by visual phenomena and positive affective experiences and intensification of emotion, directly contrasting with the schizophrenic’s emotional flattening and auditory hallucinations. Shamans are healthy rather than psychopathological, though mediums (see below) may manifest symptoms indicative of organic abnormalities.
Shamanistic Healers
The hunter-gatherer shamans’ utilization of altered states of consciousness to communicate with the spirit world on behalf of the community and for divination and healing is found in all societies; however, these activities are associated with different types of practitioners in more complex societies. The general term shamanistic healer has been proposed for these universally distributed practitioners, who use altered states of consciousness for training, healing, and divination (Winkelman 1990). Different types of shamanistic healers share characteristics, including aspects of healing involving use of altered states of consciousness, use of rituals and invocations, and removal of detrimental effects of spirits and human agents (e.g., sorcerers) (Winkelman and Winkelman 1991). Shamanistic healing processes share commonalties in addressing emotional distress. Shamanistic healers provide assurance, counteracting anxiety and its physiological effects. Their symbolic manipulations can intervene in stress mechanisms through changing emotional responses and the balance in the autonomic nervous system. These symbolic manipulations also elicit emotions, linking body and mind through effects on the limbic system.
Shamanistic healing processes elicit community support, meeting needs for belonging, comfort, and bonding with others. Shamanistic healing practices can also heal emotional problems by eliciting repressed memories and restructuring them, providing opportunities for social confession and forgiveness, resolving intrapsychic and social conflicts, and providing processes for expression of unconscious concerns. Emotions and unconscious dynamics are typically manipulated by attributing these processes to external forces (spirits). Shamanis
tic healing practices utilize universal aspects of symbolic healing (Dow 1986). This kind of healing involves placing the patient’s circumstances within the broader context of cultural mythology and ritually manipulating these relationships to emotionally transform the patient’s self and emotions. Ritual manipulations of unconscious psychological and physiological structures enable shamanistic healers to evoke cognitive and emotional responses that cause physiological changes. These are achieved by the manipulation of cultural symbols associated with autonomic responses and through activities that cause physiological changes (e.g., drumming, fasting).
There are differences in the emotional psychodynamics of shamans and the other groups included under the general term shamanistic healers, and psychodynamic differences in soul journey, possession, and meditation (Winkelman 1999). Shamanistic healers also differ with respect to a variety of other characteristics, including their ideologies of illness, the processes involved in training and healing, the nature and source of their powers, and their relationships to social institutions. These differences in shamanistic healers are illustrated in the following discussion of shaman/healers, mediums, and healers.
Shaman/Healers
Practitioners in the formal cross-cultural study who were classified as shaman/healers included the Nama Hottentot seer, the Roman sorcerer, the Kurd dervish, the Japanese ascetic, the Hi-datsa “bundle holder,” and the Bribri jawa. The shaman/healers are associated with sedentary agricultural societies, and are found at all levels of social stratification and political integration. This suggests that the adoption of agriculture and its associated consequences were fundamental causes of the transformations of shamans into shaman/healers. The fundamental role of agriculture in the transformation of shamans into other types of shamanistic healers is further supported by the significant association of agricultural societies with the presence of another form of magico-religious practitioner, the priest (Winkelman 1992). Shaman/ healers are similar to shamans, engaging in healing and divination for the community, but they differ from shamans on a number of key
features. Shaman/healers are not the highest status individuals in their societies, being eclipsed by the priests. Shaman/healers also engage in agricultural rituals. Their training involves a professional group that provides instruction, ceremonial recognition of formal status, and organization of professional activities (Winkelman 1992). Shaman/healers have specialization in their roles. Different practitioners focused on different types of activities; for example, some might carry out diagnosis or agricultural rituals, but not healing, or only healing specific kinds of illness. Shaman/healers enter altered states of consciousness and interact with the spirit world, but these generally do not involve either soul journey or possession. Shaman/healers’ altered states of consciousness are similar to those experienced during meditation, and are induced by fasting, auditory driving, social isolation, sleep deprivation, and other austerities (Winkelman 1986b, 1992, 2000). The sources of their powers include both spirits and impersonal sources, as well as rituals and techniques learned from other professionals.
Mediums
Mediums are healers and mediators of relations with the supernatural. Some of the practitioners in the cross-cultural study who were empirically classified as mediums include the Amhara zar; the Wolof M’Deup, or lefohar; the Kazak baqca; and the Japanese miko, or kyoso. The work of Lewis (1989) and Goodman (1988) typifies modern descriptions of characteristics of mediums.
Although the practitioners classified as mediums are frequently called shamans by investigators, they have profiles distinct from the empirically derived characteristics of shamans. For one thing, they are still quite common. Mediums are found primarily in agricultural societies with political integration beyond the local community. Mediums are predominantly women and are generally of low social and economic status. Mediums are not believed to engage in malevolent acts; rather they act against the influences of sorcerers, witches and evil spirits. They engage in worship and propitiation of their possessing spirits and make sacrifices to them.
Mediums also use altered states of consciousness, which begin as spontaneous possessions
that occur in late adolescence or early adulthood. Mediums’ initial episodes of altered states of consciousness are generally spontaneous and outside of personal control; these constitute both an illness and a call to the profession. These episodes are interpreted as the personality and volition of the individual being taken over by a spirit entity (Bourguignon 1976). The altered states of consciousness of mediums are characterized by central nervous system symptoms such as compulsive motor behavior, tremors, convulsions, seizures, and amnesia. These characteristics of temporal lobe discharges are not associated with the altered states of consciousness of shamans or other types of shamanistic healers (Winkelman 1992).
The training of mediums involves deliberate induction of altered states of consciousness, which enables them to gain control over possession episodes. Their professional episodes of altered states of consciousness are also characterized as involving spirit possession. These altered state of consciousness generally involve subsequent amnesia, which may also result from temporal lobe disturbances; it also reflects the belief that the medium’s body is controlled by the spirits. These spirits communicate with the clients directly through the medium’s speech, rather than through an account of visionary experiences of the kind given by a shaman.
To summarize, the most significant contrast between mediums and shamans, apart from the features of their respective societies, involve mediums’ lower social and economic status; control by the spirits; affliction and training occurring later in life (early adulthood); altered states of consciousness characterized by possession, amnesia, and convulsions; and agricultural rituals and propitiation.
Mediums (like healers) specialize in treatment of possession illness. The concept of possession involves forces outside one’s self that act upon the patient’s body and consciousness. The psychodynamic of possession provides symbolic mechanisms for externalization of the control of emotions and attachments. The altered states of consciousness associated with possession involve dramatic changes in emotions and self, with the possessing spirits providing opportunities to engage in alternate selves that express socially prohibited roles and emotions. Possession manipulates self, emotions, and relations to
others (Boddy 1994). Possession allows the responsibility for feelings and behaviors to be displaced from the patient, and instead attributed to a spirit entity that controls the body and mind. Possession may shift responsibility for illness and deviance from self to other, implicating social relations as causes of disturbance. Possession consequently allows for indirect influences and subtly alters power relations, enabling transformation of self and others. Possession affects emotional dynamics by expanding self-expression and reconstructing identity, channeling expression of emotions of anxiety, fear, and desire. Possession changes relations between individuals and groups through the incorporation of spiritual “others” into self.
Healers
Healers are still found around the world in agricultural societies with political integration beyond the level of the local community. Practitioners in the cross-cultural study empirically classified as healers include the Vietnamese thay, the Igbo oracle, the Kavak iman, or mo-lah; the Amhara debtera, and the Fur Islamic puggee. The study shows that healers are generally males; have high social and economic status; exercise political, legislative, and judicial powers; and officiate at group ceremonial activities. Their professional organizations, which provide costly training and certified initiates, also wield considerable power, enabling healers to be full-time specialists. Healers also engage in specialized diagnosis and healing, but many seem to altogether lack the activities associated with altered states of consciousness characteristic of shamans. Altered states of consciousness may nonetheless be part of the clients’ experience in their interaction with the healers, with the structuring of interactions with healers having profound effects upon the clients’ consciousness. Their divination procedures use material systems, which they interpret within standard frameworks to make diagnoses (e.g., the I Ching and Tarot). Healers’ treatments emphasize rituals, spells, incantations, formulas, and sacrifices. Exorcism was a significant activity; they also frequently use herbal medicines. Healers engage in life cycle activities— naming ceremonies, marriage rituals, and funerals. Healers also have the power to determine who is a sorcerer or witch, and take
actions against those individuals. Healers are found in societies with priests, and generally work in collaboration with them in exercising political and legislative power.
Healers differ from shamans in their lack of altered states of consciousness and direct communication with spirits; in their powerful professional organizations and formal political power; in their relations with superior group spirits and gods; in their use of material and mechanical systems for divination; and in their learning of spells, formulas, and ritual enactments for healing.
The Socioeconomic Transformation of Shamans and Shamanistic Healers
Shamans formed the original basis for spiritual healing practices in hunting and gathering societies. These practices were transformed as a consequence of social evolution. The emergence of sedentary agricultural societies, political integration, and class structures had significant effects upon the psychobiological foundations of shamanism, but their origin in innate brain structures and functions of consciousness assured the persistence of healing practices based on altered states of consciousness in more complex societies. The persistence of shamanic potentials can be seen in the shamanistic healers (mediums, healers, and shaman/healers), who reflect universal manifestations of the core characteristics of shamanism postulated by Eliade (1989): the use of altered states of consciousness in training, healing, and divination activities; their enactment in a community context; and their relations with the spirit world. Differences among shamanistic healers reflect the adaptation of the psychobiological potentials of altered states of consciousness to different subsistence practices and social and political conditions. These different social conditions transformed the manifestation of shamanic potentials, including types of altered states of consciousness and spirit relations, selection and training practices, the sources and nature of their power, their socioeconomic and political status, illness ideologies, and the nature of their treatments and professional practices (Winkelman 1990, 1992; Winkelman and Winkelman 1991).
Siikala proposed the differentiation of shamanic types as reflecting the effects of the
Societal Practitioner Configurations
BIOSOCIAL
FOUNDATIONS
Conflict |
SORCERER/ |
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SORCERER/ |
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WITCH |
WITCH |
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OR |
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ASC |
SHAMAN/ |
MEDIUM |
MEDIUM |
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SHAMAN |
HEALER |
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HEALER |
HEALER |
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Social |
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Leadership |
PRIEST |
PRIEST |
PRIEST |
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Hunting and |
Agriculture |
Political |
Social |
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Gathering |
Integration |
Stratification |
SOCIOECONOMIC CONDITIONS
source: Adapted from Michael Winkelman. 1992. Shamans, Priests and Witches: A Cross-Cultural Study of Magico-Religious Practitioners. Anthropological Research Papers #44. Tempe: Arizona State University.
breakdown of the clan structure and increasing community stratification. Winkelman’s (1986a, 1990, 1992) research implicates different conditions as transforming the original basis of shamanism. Analysis of cross-cultural data illustrates this evolution of the shamanic potentials in the systematic relationships of different types of shamanistic healers and other magico-reli-gious practitioners (sorcerers/witches and priests) to socioeconomic conditions. The transformation of shamanic practices into other types of shamanistic healers and magico-reli-gious practitioners can then be seen as a function of (1) agriculture replacing hunting and gathering; (2) transformation of nomadic lifestyle to fixed residence patterns; (3) political integration of local communities into hierarchical societies; and (4) social stratification, the creation of classes and castes, and hereditary slavery (Winkelman 1986a, 1990, 1992). These relationships of practitioner types to socioeconomic conditions are illustrated in the table (adapted from Winkelman 1992).
The chart also illustrates the way these practitioner-societal configurations correspond to relationships between practitioner selection procedures and their professional functions (Winkelman 1992), providing the basis for a model of the evolution of magico-religious functions. These social functions involve three
major dimensions: (1) the psychobiological basis in altered states of consciousness (characteristic of all shamanistic healers); (2) the role of social-political and religious leadership (assumed by priests); and (3) the conflict of shamanistic healers and priests, manifested in the sorcerer/witch. Shamans were the original source of traditions involving altered states of consciousness, and provided the social leadership potentials at the basis of priesthoods. Shamanistic practitioners were eventually persecuted by the expansion of hierarchical priestly religious structures, giving rise to the phenomenon recognized as witchcraft.
Contemporary Shamanisms and Neo-Shamanisms
Modern European societies did not have shamanism, which had disappeared in processes of sociocultural evolution and the brutal oppression of remaining shamanistic practices by religions and state political systems as witchcraft (Harner 1973, Winkelman 1992). Consequently, the concept of shamanism reentered modern consciousness through colonial contacts with other cultures. Ethnographic studies of healing practices around the world contributed to an awareness of cross-cultural similarity in these healing practices. An
thropological and interdisciplinary studies contributed to an emulation of these practices in modern societies, an expansion of Western spiritualities in the late twentieth century, and their application to contemporary healing (Krippner and Welch 1992). Some of these modern borrowings have attempted to maintain a focus upon the classic aspects of shamanic practice; these aspects are emphasized in the concept of Core Shamanism developed by Michael Harner (1990) and in the activities of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies (see www.shamanism.org). Many other modern adaptations, however, were not based upon the primordial hunter-gatherer patterns of shamanism, resulting in the extension of the term shaman to a bewildering variety of practitioners, some of which have little relationship to original forms of shamanism.
This overextension of the term shaman can be remedied by restricting its use to the practitioners who share the empirically derived characteristics described above. Terms such as medium, healer, and priest can be applied to other types of healing practitioners. All those practitioners who, like shamans, use altered states of consciousness in training and healing, can be associated with their ancient shamanic roots through the term shamanistic healer.
Michael Winkelman
See also: Art and Shamanism; Core Shamanism and Neo-Shamanism; Demonic Possession and Exorcism; Entheogens and Shamanism; Healing and Shamanism; Psychopathology and Shamanism; Spirits and Souls; Trance, Shamanic; Witchcraft and Sorcery in Shamanism
References and further reading:
Achterberg, Jeanne. 1985. Imagery in Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine. Boston: New Science Library, Shambhala.
Boddy, Janice. 1994. “Spirit Possession Revisited: Beyond Instrumentality.” Annual Review of Anthropology 23: 407—434.
Bourguignon, Erica. 1976. Possession. San Francisco: Chandler and Sharpe.
Dow, James. 1986. “Universal Aspects of Symbolic Healing: A Theoretical Synthesis.” American Anthropologist 88: 56—69.
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London:
Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Goodman, Felicitas. 1988. How About Demons? Possession and Exorcism in the Modern World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Halifax, Joan. 1979. Shamanic Voices. New York: E. P. Dutton.
Harner, Michael. 1990. The Way of the Shaman. San Francisco: Harper and Row.
Harner, Michael, ed. 1973. Hallucinogens and Shamanism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hultkrantz, A. 1973. “A Definition of Shamanism.” Temenos 9: 25—37.
Jakobsen, Merete. 1999. Shamanism: Traditional and Contemporary Approaches to the Mastery of Spirits and Healing. New York: Berghahn Books.
Krippner, Stanley, and Peter Welch. 1992.
Spiritual Dimensions of Healing: From Native Shamanism to Contemporary Health Care. New York: Irvington Publishers.
Laughlin, Charles, John McManus, and Eugene d’Aquili. 1992. Brain, Symbol and Experience: Toward a Neurophenomenology of Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lewis, Ioan M. 1989. Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession. 2d ed. London: Routledge.
Noll, Richard. 1983. “Shamanism and Schizophrenia: a State-Specific Approach to the Schizophrenia Metaphor of Shamanic States.” American Ethnologist 10: 443—459.
Siikala, Anna-Leena. 1978. “The Rite Technique of the Siberian Shaman.” Folklore Fellows Communication 220. Helsinki: Soumalainen Tiedeskaremia Academia.
Townsend, Joan. 1997. “Shamanism.” Pp. 429—469 in Anthropology of Religion: A Handbook of Method and Theory. Edited by S. Glazier. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Winkelman, Michael. 1986a. “Magico-Religious Practitioner Types and Socioeconomic Conditions.” Behavior Science Research 20: 17—46.
———. 1986b. “Trance States: A Theoretical Model and Cross-Cultural Analysis.” Ethos 14: 76-105.
———. 1990. “Shaman and Other ’Magico-Religious Healers’: A Cross-Cultural Study of their Origins, Nature and Social Transformation.” Ethos 18: 308-352.
———. 1992. Shamans, Priests and Witches. A Cross-Cultural Study of Magico-Religious Practitioners. Anthropological Research Papers 44. Tempe: Arizona State University.
———. 1999. “Altered States of
Consciousness.” Pp. 32—38 in Encyclopedia of Human Emotions. Edited by D. Levinson, J. Ponzetti, and P. Jorgensen. New York: Macmillan Reference.
———. 2000. Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey.
Winkelman, Michael, and Cindy Winkelman. 1991. “Shamanistic Healers and Their
Therapies.” Pp. 163—182 in Yearbook of Cross-Cultural Medicine and Psychotherapy 1990. Edited by W. Andritzky. Berlin: Verlag und Vertrieb.
Winkelman, Michael, and Doug White. 1987. “A Cross-Cultural Study of Magico-Religious Practitioners and Trance States: Data Base.” In Human Relations Area Files Research Series in Quantitative Cross-Cultural Data. Vol. 3D. Edited by D. Levinson and R. Wagner. New Haven: HRAF Press.
DAOISM AND SHAMANISM
To understand the connection between Daoism and Shamanism it is necessary to examine the shamanic nature of early Chinese religion. Shamanism in China is said to extend back to the mythical past when rulers relied on special powers to end drought, solicit rain, and improve the harvest. Shaman kings with the surname Wu reigned during the Shang dynasty (1600—1027 B.C.E.), using divination and sacrificial rituals to connect with the spirit world, as suggested in oracle bone inscriptions and animal-like designs in art (in bronze, jade, lacquer, and wood) (Chen 1937; Chang 1983). But in recent years some scholars have voiced concerns about the use of the term shamanism to describe early Chinese kingship. The chief complaint has been that there is no evidence providing specific details about the nature of the shaman king’s experience, such as whether the king took spirit journeys, became possessed, or spoke the words of the deity (Keightley 1983). Others, such as Edward Davis, are concerned about the proliferation of works that describe shamanism as the substrate of Chinese religion (2001, 2).
Those who subscribe to the view that rulers of the Shang dynasty were shaman kings note that following the Shang dynasty, when the dynasty was overthrown by the Zhou, shamans suffered a decline in social status. The Rites of Zhou (Zhouli), a Chinese ritual classic, tells how the wu (a term referring to both male and female mediums or shamans) became part of an idealized feudal bureaucracy that may have existed in the late Zhou dynasty (1027—256 b.c.e.). During this period, shamans belonged to the Ministry of Rites, presiding over funerals, performing exorcisms and rain dances, and sometimes becoming possessed during trance. Only those who did not enter trance enjoyed
the rank of ministry official. These ranked male shamans were charged with the training of the other shamans in the rain dances. In addition to the male and female shamans, there were also shamans charged with caring for horses.
Among all of the early rituals that shamans performed, rituals to summon rain were the most important and most coveted for proving a shaman’s power. The Han dynasty lexicon, Shuowen jiezi, defines the shaman (wu) as a priest or invoker, who is female, and also dances for rain with two sleeves raised in dance posture. Explanations about the importance of rain dances and flood control in Chinese shamanism often include a reference to the myth of Yu, the flood controller and sage king, and King Tang. After five years of flooding and severe famine, Yu exhausted himself while he was trying to stop a raging flood. An illness following his successful efforts crippled him, and for the rest of his life Yu walked with a limp that history records as the gait of yu, or the shaman’s gait. The shaman’s gait became the name of a dance performed by Daoist adepts in later Daoist religion.
The story of the sage King Tang also illustrates the combined role of king as political ruler and shaman, and the precedent for later shamans to perform rain prayers and dances. After several years of drought, King Tang assembled a funeral pyre in the mythical Fusang grove, and prayed to di, the ghosts and the spirits. He was on the verge of searing his flesh when it began to rain. Miraculously, the downpour extinguished the flames and saved King Tang from sacrificing himself.
Reflecting the importance of self-sacrifice in securing rain, early Chinese rain rituals involved the rain (yu) sacrifice, in which the female shaman (wu) and the cripple called the wang, as well as sick children, were burned ei
ther by fire or by the heat of the sun (Schafer 1951). Later rain rituals in the Han dynasty introduced different elements believed to improve the chance of rain during times of drought, such as the substitution of dragon effigies for the sacrifice of a human being (Loewe 1987).
Daoism
Early Daoism is usually defined by two texts: The Way and Its Virtue (Daodejing) and the Zhuangzi. The Zhuangzi is attributed to Zhuang Zhou, who lived in the district of Meng within the State of Song near the border of Chu during the reigns of King Liang and Qi. In the Zhuangzi, shamans named wu are not depicted favorably, and are instead portrayed as charlatans who fool people into believing they can divine the future, and as outdated practitioners of cruel sacrificial rituals. These individuals have many of the traits of shamans: They are able to fly and ride on the clouds and mist, they enter trances, and they are masters of fire and the other natural elements. They are recognizable by their names (the true man, the daemonic man, the perfect man, the sage, the nameless man) and by their unusual appearances (hunched backs and skinny necks). These individuals become shaman-like individuals through experiences such as the one had by Ziqi of the south wall: His breathing changed, his body seemed like a tree that had withered, and his mind seemed like ashes. Master Yu is an example of an ideal human being who acquired his unusual appearance—becoming a hunchback—during illness.
In addition to the Zhuangzi, early texts often associated with Daoism include the Elegies of Chu (Chuci), and the Classic of Mountains and Waters (Shanhaijing). Wang Yi (d. 158 c.e.), an imperial librarian who wrote the earliest commentary on the Elegies of Chu, attributes the text to Qu Yuan (fourth century b.c.e.), a loyal official betrayed by his ruler and banished to the south of China. Although Wang Yi’s commentary downplays the shamanic origins of the songs, contemporary commentaries and scholarship have mined the work for its detailed information about shamanism in southern China before the second century c.e. (Waley 1955; Hawkes 1959; Sukhu 1999). One of the best examples of
shamanism is found in the section called the Nine Songs. In the first song of this work, “Great One, Lord of the East,” a ling, “shaman,” performs a ritual dance to Taiyi, the great sun god. The shaman’s dance to a cacophony of drum beats, pipes, zithers, and the jingling of the jade pendants on her waistband sends her into a trancelike state that enables the deity to descend and possess her. In other songs, a ling takes spirit journeys, riding in chariots pulled by dragons. Another section of the Elegies of Chu, Zhaohun (The Summons of the Soul), tells about a shaman named Wu Yang (wu being the name of the traditional shaman in China), who summons the soul of a sick or dying person to return, warning the soul of the terrifying things that await it if it continues to wander, and tempting the soul with the celebration that awaits its return (Hawkes 1959).
The authorship and dating of the Classic of Mountains and Waters (Shanhaijing) is shrouded in debate, with some saying the text is a traveler’s guide or geographical gazetteer of the ancient Chinese terrain and others saying that the text is the work of shamans (Yuan Ke 1982, preface, 1). Shamans called wu are healers, and bring the dead back to life. There is also the suggestion that their practices are related to the snake cult and the cult of the Queen Mother of the West, who is later associated with immortality. The shamans of the Classic of Mountains and Waters also search for medicinal herbs believed to extend one’s life, and transform one into an immortal, like the fangshi, “magicians,” who are known to have traveled in search of immortality elixirs for the first emperor of China (259—210 B.C.E.) and Emperor Wu of the Han (141—87 B.C.E.).
Later Daoism
Daoist religion is traditionally seen as having developed out of these Daoist texts and the pursuit of immortality, as well as shamanic exorcism, healing, and spirit possession, during the latter part of the Han dynasty. For most of the Han dynasty, shamans performed rain dances and exorcisms and acted as spirit mediums in court circles, but unlike the shamans of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, shamans during the Han dynasty seldom held official positions (Lin Fushi 1988).
Shamans and ecstatic practices, such as the use of talismans, exorcism, and spirit possession, played key roles in gaining popular support for new Daoist movements. In 142 c.e. Zhang Daoling had a shamanistic vision of Laozi, in which Laozi appeared to him in person, transforming him into the first Celestial Master and founder of the Celestial Masters Movement (Tianshi), which began in the west. In 184 c.e., another Daoist movement was underway in the east, called the Yellow Turban Movement (also known as the Great Peace Movement), led by Zhang Jue, a man with shamanistic healing powers. Part of the Yellow Turban Movement’s appeal was in their use of talismans, which were burned and mixed with water and offered up as cures to patients (Harper 1998).
Daoist schools were influenced by the rituals of the Celestial Masters as well as Buddhist texts and practices, and by shamans, who were seen as competitors by the early schools of Daoist religion. Like the Daoist movements before them, the new texts and practices of the Highest Clarity (Shangqing) and Numinous Treasures (Lingbao) Daoist schools incorporated shamanistic techniques such as spirit possession and spirit journeys, rain dancing, healing, exorcism, and talisman writing. Between 367 and 370 c.e., the scriptures of the Highest Clarity school of Daoism were revealed to Yang Xi during visions of Lady Wei, an immortal. This new school of Daoism also absorbed many shamanistic aspects into its practice, such as the use of talismans, the pursuit of longevity and immortality through inner cultivation, and meditative techniques. Daoist adepts took spirit journeys to the stars, and while they were there performed the dance of yu, or the shaman’s gait. In this dance, the adept would drag one foot behind him, mimicking the way in which Yu walked after he stopped the flood (Robinet 1993, 200-226).
The Numinous Treasures (Lingbao) school of Daoism became a unified school during the middle of the fifth century. The term Numinous Treasures refers to the one who “summoned and controlled the numinous souls of the dead” (Yamada 2000, 226). The term ling-bao came to represent those who became guardians of the spirits during rites of spirit possession and may have originated in the song “Lord of the East” in the Nine Songs, where
the lingbao is a type of shaman who communicates with the spirit world (Hawkes 1959). Numinous Treasures scriptures emphasized liturgy and developed out of the scriptures of the Highest Clarity school and southern traditions (such as those discussed in the Elegies of Chu and the Classic of Mountains and Waters), as well as Pure Land Buddhism (Bokenkamp 1983).
Daoism Today
Daoism today combines rituals, divinations, beliefs, and practices from the many schools of Daoism (Celestial Masters, Highest Clarity, Numinous Treasures, Quanzhen [lit., “whole truth”]) and shamanism. Formally, Daoist rituals and practices are divided into two groups, but in practice there are variations in southern China and on Taiwan. There are the Daoist priests (daoshi) and the Daoist ritual masters (fashi), who are distinguished by the color of their hats and the kind of rituals they perform. Daoist priests belong to the literati class and inherit their positions. They wear black hats and use classical Chinese during communal rituals in which trance and exorcism do not play a part, and they do not serve a local community. Daoist ritual masters, in contrast, do not belong to the literati class and do not inherit their positions. They wear red hats and use vernacular Chinese during rituals for the local communities they serve.
The Daoist ritual master provides a link between the formal aspects of Daoist religion and the local traditions, often taking on the role of the shaman who is a spirit medium and performing exorcisms (Davis 2001, 11). Shamans, often associated with Daoist practice, have many names and can be found in southern China and on Taiwan. Some have names like the wu of Chinese antiquity, such as the wupo, “granny shaman,” the wushi, “shaman teacher,” and the shenwu, “daemonic shaman.” Others have names that imply childlike qualities such as the tongzi, “youths who are mediums,” the ji-tong, “divining youths,” and the matong, “horse youths.” There are other male and female shamans called lingji, “diviners of the spirit,” and shamans who are female called the hongyi. Contemporary shamans perform many functions, sometimes alone and sometimes with the help of the Daoist ritual master. He or she is a
spirit medium, exorcist, diviner of fortunes and dreams, spirit writer, healer, and ritual dancer. During important festivals and on pilgrimages, male and female shamans who are in ritual trances and possessed by deities sometimes perform self-mortification, using sharp objects such as swords to cut their backs and foreheads.
Alison R. Marshall
See also: Animal Symbolism (Asia); Chinese Shamanism, Classical; Chinese Shamanism, Contemporary; Tantrism and Shamanism
References and further reading:
Bokenkamp, Stephen R. 1983. “Sources of the Ling-pao Scriptures.” Pp. 434—486 in Tantric and Taoist Studies in Honour of R.A. Stein. Vol.
2. Edited by Michel Strickmann. Bruxelles: Institute Belge des Hautes Etudes Chinoises.
Chang Kwang-chih. 1983. Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chen Mengjia. 1937. “Mythology and Shaman Arts of the Shang dynasty (Shangdai de shenhua yu wushu).” Yanjing xuebao 19: 91—155.
Davis, Edward L. 2001. Society and the Supernatural in Song China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Harper, Donald. 1998. Early Chinese Medical Literature: The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts. London: Kegan Paul International.
Hawkes, David, trans. 1959. Ch’u Tz’u: “The Songs of the South.” New York: Oxford University Press.
Keightley, David. 1983. “Royal Shamanism in the Shang: Archaic Vestige or Central Reality?” Paper prepared for The Workshop on Chinese Divination and Portent Interpretation. Berkeley: June 20—July 1.
Lin Fushi. 1988. Shamans of the Han dynasty (Handai de wuzhe). Baiqiao: Daoxiang chubanshe.
Loewe, Michael. 1987. “The Cult of the Dragon and the Invocation for Rain.” In Chinese Ideas About Nature and Society: Studies in Honour of Derk Bodde. Edited by Charles Le Blanc and Susan Blader. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Robinet, Isabelle. 1993. Taoist Meditation. Translated by Norman Girardot and Julian Pas. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Schafer, Edward H. 1951. “Ritual Exposure in Ancient China.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 14: 130-184.
Sukhu, Gopal. 1999. “Monkeys, Shamans, Emperors and Poets: The Chuci and Images of Chu during the Han Dynasty.” In Defining Chu: Image and Reality in Ancient China. Edited by Constance A. Cook and John S. Major. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Waley, Arthur. 1955. The Nine Songs. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Yamada Toshiaki. 2000. “The Lingbao School.” Translated by Livia Kohn. In Daoism Handbook. Edited by Livia Kohn. Leiden: Brill.
Yuan Ke. 1982. Shanhaijing jiaozhu. Taipei: Liren.
DEMONIC POSSESSION
AND EXORCISM
Possession by demons, that is, evil spirits, and the resulting need to free the person who is experiencing this type of change through shamanistic healing, is reported from many parts of the world. While the concept of possession is often attributed to shamans, core shamans and the shamans of hunter-gatherer societies generally do not experience possession (Winkelman 1992). Possession experiences are associated with societies where the people’s livelihood is predominantly agricultural, and with cultures characterized by social stratification and jurisdiction hierarchy (Bourguignon and Evascu 1977). Possession is, however, significantly and independently predicted by political integration (Winkelman 1992).
The phenomenon of possession is widespread, but the type of invading entity varies according to the cultural circumstances in which it arises. It is not always negative. Sometimes a possessing entity is helpful, having been called by a ritual to enter a body and then leaving at the conclusion of that ritual. In some cultures, spirits are useful if one is careful not to offend them. The therapeutic resolution of possession experiences is traditionally achieved through the ritual of exorcism. In other cultures, invading entities are considered inherently dangerous. This article focuses upon neg
ative possession experiences and their therapeutic resolution.
Possession is conceptualized as involving an alien entity or consciousness that enters into a person’s body, influencing the person and acting through and controlling the person’s body. Possession generally occurs spontaneously, and then may be deliberately induced in healing sessions through drumming, dancing, and drugs that induce an altered state of consciousness. The altered state of consciousness typically produces an alteration in EEG, resulting in a profile where theta waves are dominant and blood pressure drops to low levels, while at the same time the pulse rate increases (Goodman 1972 377—379; cf. Winkelman 2000 on the physiology of altered states of consciousness).
In cases of demonic possession, a possessing spirit is essentially evil, an invader whose goal is to do harm and who will leave only after a sometimes very difficult exorcism has been performed. Though demons are occasionally considered useful for the information they can give, they always attempt to do harm to their victims and the people around them. Someone possessed by a demon does not desire this experience; rather, the demon is asked to enter by someone else through a curse or a similarly harmful ritual. If such a spirit has entered, then the victim or the victim’s family must find someone who can perform the appropriate exorcism. Otherwise, the possession is likely to end in the victim’s eventual death.
Demonic possession can cause various types of illness; it falls loosely into two distinguishable categories based on the cultural expectations of the people involved, although these categories do not exhaust all cases of negative possession. Possessions originating within the large agricultural societies of sub-Saharan Africa differ from those originating within the agricultural societies of Eurasia. The exorcism rituals for each are different. The African type typically involves rough handling within a death and rebirth ritual. The entity expelled is conceived of as a ghost, that is, a spirit of a once living person. The Eurasian type involves communicating directly with the demon and demanding from it its name, purpose for entering, and the conditions on which it will leave. The entity here is usually an inherently evil spirit with no past as a human.
Many of the agricultural societies of Africa have developed rich cultural systems around
positive possession. Possession is used for healing and divining, as well as to meet other diverse social needs. The spirits involved are considered helpful and benevolent. The spirits themselves are viewed as benefiting from the exchange—people keep them alive by offering them sacrifices and allow them to participate in the social process by lending the spirits their bodies. Such beings enter only when invited and leave at the ritually appropriate time.
Some entities are used in negative ways. In most negative African possessions, the invading demon is a ghost, that is, a spirit of a dead person. In 1969 Elizabeth Colson wrote about Tonga ghosts of Zambia: “Ghost possession [is] wholly undesirable. Victim and helpers seek only to expel a ghost and prevent its re-entry. The ghost has no message to give, either public or private; it has no desire to be appeased. Ghosts have no mediums, only victims, and these must be short-term ones; either a ghost is expelled or the victim dies.”
This description applies to most other African ghost possessions. The Voudou practices of Haiti, known popularly in the United States as voodoo, provide another good example. Voudou is a contemporary descendant of native African religious practices brought to Haiti when members of different African groups were transported there as slaves. Cases have been described where an otherwise healthy person becomes suddenly sick and unable to eat. When other cures are unsuccessful, the person may be brought to a mambo, or priestess, for an exorcism. The illness is thought to be the result of a curse from someone who wished the victim harm. A person wishing to make such a curse must first invoke the deity Saint Expedit and the Master of the Dead, Baron-Samedi, and then make an offering at a graveyard, and take handfuls of grave dirt and put them in a place where the victim regularly passes. To rid someone of a ghost possession, the mambo must perform an elaborate exorcism, which may involve spitting rum in the face of the patient and killing a hen by burying it alive at the roots of a banana tree. Shortly after the conclusion of an exorcism ceremony, the victim should regain health and be able to return to regular daily life.
In exorcism rituals of the African type, the patient is handled roughly and made to go through much physical discomfort. At the close
of the ritual, the patient is cleaned and given fresh clothes and food or milk to consume. The ritual as a whole can be seen as representing a death and rebirth, endured so that the victim can be reborn without the encumbering spirits.
In demonic possessions of the African type, the invading beings are usually undifferentiated ghosts without individual personalities. In possessions of the Eurasian type, on the other hand, the invaders are generally creatures of evil with individual characteristics and even names. They may claim to be dammed people, fallen angels, or simply evil spirits. As in the African type, Eurasian demons may enter a victim through a curse or an act of witchcraft. Demons are also thought to enter when the person breaks a significant taboo or commits a serious crime.
Typically, a person experiencing an African demonic possession will not have direct communication with the possessing being, nor will it usually take control of the body. In the usual cases of Eurasian demonic possession, on the other hand, the invading demon may cause the victim to act in unusual ways, hurting others or causing self-injury, or the demon may speak through the victim’s mouth, announcing its presence.
Eurasian possessions usually include periods of depression and frightening visions, interspersed with sudden episodes in which a demon appears to take complete control of the victim’s body. These attacks have a clear onset, where the victim exhibits all the signs of entering into a religious altered state of consciousness. Eurasian demonic possessions also have their own particular set of symptoms (although they are not necessarily all present in any given case) including insomnia, aimless wandering, compulsively eating strange or repulsive substances (or else refusing to eat at all), a repulsive stench, rigid muscles, unusual strength, fits of screaming or weeping, a significant change in facial features as a result of muscle contractions, and violent aggression against oneself, nearby people, or objects.
When the demon takes control, it will speak through the person’s mouth but with a deeper, harsher voice. This may be because in this altered state the person’s true vocal cords are not used, but rather the ventricular folds (the superior or false vocal cords). Also, the speech of the demon has been found to have a characteristic intonation pattern. Each phrase has an early
peak followed by descending intonation. In this state the demon yells invectives and obscenities, and, if in a Christian context, it speaks of damnation and insults religious figures. The demon may also make predictions relating to the Church.
A person possessed must seek an exorcism; otherwise the possession will end in death from wasting away or from the demon forcing the victim to commit suicide. Different cultures have different qualifications for someone performing an exorcism. An experienced sorcerer, shaman, or priest may be necessary. For a Catholic priest to perform an exorcism, he must first get permission from a bishop, rarely given today. The Roman Catholic exorcism ritual was last committed to writing in the seventeenth century in the Rituale Romanum. It is a rite and not a sacrament, which means that the acting priest has considerable freedom in varying the details.
The Eurasian exorcist’s ritual involves little physical handling; the only physical contact between the exorcist and patient is the laying on of hands. The possessed person may also be made to touch sacred objects. In such a ritual there are a few standard steps. The exorcist appeals to the relevant benevolent entities of the alternate reality. The demon will be pushed into revealing its name and its reason for entering into the patient. It is finally asked for the conditions upon which it will leave and when it will depart.
In some cultures it is common for a demon to request that the family give a large feast or that a ritual drama be performed in its honor. Commonly the demon will name a specific time in the future, at which point it will leave. The contract of a demon is always maintained, but when a demon does go that does not always end the victim’s troubles. In some cases multiple demons will claim to inhabit a body. When one is driven out, another may come forward, with a new name, personality, and new conditions for going.
Most demons will resist strongly the attempt to exorcise them. It may not be until after many sessions of exorcism (in which the presence of holy objects or the reading of holy texts has tortured the demons) that they announce their time or conditions for leaving.
Accounts of these possessions and exorcisms are widespread and ancient. In the Christian
New Testament, the Book of Mark tells of a successful exorcism preformed by Jesus. Jesus encounters a possessed man who lives in tombs and who cries and cuts himself with stones. Jesus asks the demon its name, to which it replies “My name is Legion: for we are many” (Mark 3:7—9). The demons beg to stay, then finally ask to enter a large herd of swine. Jesus allows it, and the demons possess the swine, sending them over a cliff and into the sea to drown, at which point the man is cured. In a work of third-century c.e. Greek writer Flavius Philo-stratus, a magician named Apollonios of Tyana is reported to have cured a young possessed boy. In this story, however, Apollonios writes a letter, and the exorcism is achieved by having the boy’s mother read the letter out loud to the demon.
Exorcisms seem to have been occurring for thousands of years all over the world and continue today. For example, in the 1970s a well-publicized case occurred in Germany. A twenty-three-year-old woman named Anneliese Michel experienced a severe demonic possession. She went first to the medical establishment, but they were little help. She eventually found a priest who would perform an exorcism, and he did so regularly for almost a year. During this time the demons claimed to be the spirits of Cain; Judas; Nero; Adolf Hitler; an obscure, but documented, Pastor Fleischmann; and even Lucifer. They claimed to have entered her as a result of a curse that was put on her before she was born. The exorcism was unfortunately unsuccessful, and Anneliese died in July 1976.
Most exorcisms, however, are successful. An-neliese might have died because of the interference of the psychoactive medication that medical professionals gave her over the same period, which gradually made it impossible for her to enter the trance state necessary for the exorcism to be performed properly.
Much has been written attempting to explain possession phenomena scientifically. The illnesses of possessions of the African type may have physical origins. The exorcism is then seen as a psychosomatic cure. The possessions associated with an altered state of consciousness have interesting parallels to various behaviors diagnosed as psychological disorders. Demonic possession is an illness, not a normal or desired condition. Demon possession has particular signs and symptoms that do not exactly corre
spond with the symptoms of any psychological ailment. Possession cannot simply be reduced to psychological disorders. Furthermore, exorcism usually provides a successful cure in cases of negative possession, one that would be difficult to achieve through medical or psychiatric processes. Whatever the explanation, such exorcisms are important to people who need them and to those interested in the range of human experience. They should not be disregarded by modern research.
Felicitas D. Goodman
Seth Josephson
See also: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Shamans; Extraction; Healing and Shamanism; Spirit Possession
References and further reading:
Beattie, John, and John Middleton, eds. 1969.
Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa. New York: Africana.
Boddy, J. 1994. “Spirit Possession Revisited: Beyond Instrumentality.” Annual Review of Anthropology 23: 407—434.
Bourguignon, Erika. 1976a. Possession. San Francisco: Chandler and Sharpe.
———. 1976b. “Spirit Possession Beliefs and Social Structure.” In The Realm of the ExtraHuman Ideas and Actions. Edited by A. Bhardati. The Hague: Mouton.
Bourguignon, Erika, and Thomas L. Evascu. 1977. “Altered States of Consciousness Within a General Evolutionary Perspective: A Holocultural Analysis.” Behavior Science Research 12(3): 197-216.
Crapanzano, Vincent, Vivian Garrison, eds.
1977. Case Studies in Spirit Possession. New York, London, Sydney, Toronto: John Wiley and Sons.
Goodman, Felicitas D. 1972. Speaking in Tongues: A Cross-Cultural Study of Glossolalia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Henney, Jeannette H., and Esther Pressel. 1974.
Trance, Healing, and Hallucination: Three Field Studies in Religious Experience. New York: Wiley Interscience.
———. 1981. The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
———. 1988. How About Demons?: Possession and Exorcism in the Modern World.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
———. 1989. “The Neurophysiology of Shamanic Ecstasy.” Pp. 377-379 in
Shamanism: Past and Present. Edited by M.
Hoppal and O. J. von Sadovszky. Los Angeles: ISTOR Books.
Kenney, M. G. 1981. “Multiple Personality and Spirit Possession.” Psychiatry 44: 337—358.
Lewis, Ioan M. 1989. Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession. 2d ed. London: Routledge.
Martin, Malachi. 1976. Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Living Americans. New York: Reader’s Digest Press.
Winkelman, Michael. 1992. “Shamans, Priests and Witches.” Tempe, AZ. ASU Anthropological Research Papers #44.
———. 2000. Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey.
DIVINATION
Divination is concerned with the acquisition of information. The derivation of divination from divine makes explicit the customary assumption about divination—that the information comes from a spiritual source. Cultures have many different forms of divination processes; those associated with shamanism are some of the most widespread divinatory forms. Divination is inherent to essential aspects of shamanism, reflected in classic conceptualizations of shamans as someone who enters ecstasy to interact with the spirit world on behalf of the community. This interaction with the spirit world had as a primary function the acquisition of information relevant to group or individual concerns. Use of divination in shamanic practice mirrors the functions of shamanism: diagnosis of causes of disease; prognosis regarding the patient’s recovery; determination of the interests and intents of spiritual forces; location of animals for hunting; learning about the condition of separated family members; planning the future movement of the group or its enemies; determination of the intentions and whereabouts of others; and prophecy.
Social Explanations of Divination
Divination’s etymological origin in divine reveals its roots in relationships to spirits and the
information available from the spirits. The dominant theories addressing divination fail to respect this indigenous perspective of interaction with spirits as a means of obtaining access to real knowledge and valid information. Although anthropology has viewed divination as a form of communication, “scientific” approaches have generally rejected the perspective that divination procedures involve communication with spirits. Rejecting the explicit claims of spiritual communication and influence made by those who use divination procedures and the presumed empirical legitimacy of those procedures, those who accept the scientific perspective have instead offered explanations of the basis of divination that emphasize latent social functions and psychosocial processes. Divination persists, according to this dominant perspective, because it contributes to societal stability.
This dominant approach reflects George Park’s (1963) functionalist perspective that divination procedures produce socially useful results, eliminating disorder in social relations through facilitating decision-making processes. Park considered the consequent reduction of anxiety as secondary to the social implications. Park pointed out that divination is generally with respect to some plan of action about which decision-making is difficult—life crises such as illness and potential death, conflicts, and economic or political calamity. But the legitimizing function of divination lies in its ability to provide a social validation for actions that would be difficult to justify on an individual basis, depersonalizing specific decisions and actions. Divinatory consultation takes the direct decision away from the individual, bringing in other considerations. Divination procedures distance the decisions from the individual, engaging a consultation process in which many opinions and points of view are considered and a consensus derived. It is this consensus accepted by the group that is viewed as the “function” of the divination, giving decisions a stamp of legitimacy in a dramatic social ceremony that invokes divine approval.
The traditional characterization of divination procedures as conservative devices points to what is in some respects an inevitable aspect of divination, since established cultural frameworks are used to define conditions and treatments, channeling opinion and producing social consensus. Divination inevitably operates
as a form of social representation, classification, and control, orienting people to traditional cultural norms and authority. But many lines of evidence call into question simple social control functions of divination procedures. If divination procedures apply the legitimacy of authority and tradition to determine behavior, why not seek out the wisdom and advice of high-status elder authorities?
An alternative view of divination as a randomizing device was postulated by Omar Moore (1957) in his assessment of the practices of scapulimancy. Scapulimancy uses an animal scapula, or shoulder blade, which is prepared and placed upon the coals of the fire; the ensuing burns and cracks are interpreted to determine the direction for hunters to take. Moore characterized this as a method to weaken habitual decision-making processes that could produce nonproductive outcomes. Instead of relying upon experience from past hunts, which may be nonadaptive because of reactions by surviving animals, Moore postulated that scapulimancy provides a randomizing or chance mechanism that produces advantages over habitual behaviors in hunting outcomes. Lothar Vollweiler and Alison Sanchez (1983) rejected Moore’s postulations on the basis of a careful analysis of divination practices, hunting patterns, and behavior of hunted animals. They instead viewed scapulimancy as a practice used by hunters during ecological crises to reestablish their relations with spirit powers that control game animals. They rejected theories of the material adaptiveness of such practices, instead pointing to well-recognized sociopsychological consequences motivating continued effort in the face of uncertainty.
Divination is a context in which a socially acceptable outcome is negotiated, but one that is subjected to the development of consensus among many points of view. Rather than a blind acceptance of tradition, these processes involve a selective interpretation of tradition and the application of some traditional models but not others. Social control views of divination’s social functions may be legitimate interpretations of some practices. But the success of new approaches in medical anthropology suggests the need for new perspectives in this area. Medical anthropologists have been able to establish the therapeutic effectiveness of traditional healing processes, and so it no longer
seems appropriate to dismiss the possibility that the divinatory and diagnostic practices involved in those processes may have empirical validity.
Philip Peek (1991) characterized divination systems as an epistemology, constituting a people’s system of assumptions about the nature of knowledge. Although academics may not be willing to embrace the “spirit hypothesis” of external autonomous entities, they should attempt to understand what spirit experiences mean for those who engage them. In particular, they should ask questions about the nature of the information provided by these spirit encounters. One approach involves “naturalizing” the spirit encounter by considering people’s experiences to be real, but analyzing these experiences in terms of social and brain processes. These perspectives were voiced in Peek’s views of divination procedures as engaging nonrational processes and non-normal modes of cognition. The willingness to submit important questions to the outcomes of oracular processes reveals a willingness to take information from sources beyond the direct control of one’s rational processes. Peek points to altered states of consciousness and spirit possession associated with divination as principal manifestations of non-normal cognition. Altered states of consciousness have specific neurological properties that engage nonordinary modes of cognition, providing important sources of information not directly available to the conscious mind (Winkelman 1997, 2000).
Divination procedures also apparently access nonverbal information channels of the limbic brain and lower brain centers. In addition to the symbolic communication forms of language, humans use other forms of visual, behavioral, nonverbal, emotional, and somatic communication (see Hunt [1995] for a discussion of presentational symbolism and Winkelman [2000] for a discussion of other forms of thought from the ancient levels of the brain). Many of these processes are symbolic, but are experienced in systems that function without the mediation of language. Peek reminds us that divination systems combine this intuitive-synthetical mode of thinking with logical-analytical thought, making the diviner someone who is effective in communicating between modes of thought.
Shamanic Healing and Divination
The use of shamanic divination in healing was concerned with both the immediate cause of illness and the more distal and perhaps ultimate causes of a condition.
Divination was generally part of the shaman’s activities as a prelude to healing. Divination of the patient’s circumstances and likelihood of cure was often a preliminary step, but in some cases shamans would receive information about patients and their likely prognosis before the patients’ arrival. In some cases divination specialists were distinct from those doing the healing. Some divinatory specialists did not heal, but referred their clients to others for healing of the conditions they diagnosed. Other diagnostic specialists also cured, but were called upon for diagnoses in cases where other shamans had failed to effectively heal the patient. These specialists are associated with more complex societies and belong to the category Michael Winkelman (1992) classified as shaman/healers.
Information Channels in
Shamanic Divination
Shamanic divination engages in a number of different information channels, including experiences interpreted as spirit communication, which may be viewed as involving fundamental structures and processes of consciousness; altered states of consciousness and their visual experiences, a presentational symbolic system induced through deliberate vision questing and dreams; body-based sensations derived in particular from the hands; and experiences induced by the focus of attention on material objects, particularly those with reflective surfaces.
Spirits in Divination
The shaman’s ability to divine, regardless of the method used, was generally seen as based on information provided by the spirits. The necessary engagement with the spirit might be as simple as turning attention inward and asking the spirit present within one’s body. In other cases it required a much more elaborate engagement with the spirit, singing, talking, and making offerings to the spirit before it would take up abode within the shaman and be available for divinatory consultation. The information
coming from the spirit could be manifested in a variety of ways. These included visions and voices that appeared to the shaman and their effects upon divinatory objects (e.g., statues, beads, parts of the body).
Dominant anthropological perspectives have considered spirit beliefs to be reflections of societal structures and concerns. While at first glance this view might be seen as simply reflecting the social control hypothesis, viewing the spirit world and associated divination-interpretation systems as an indigenous psychology provides additional perspectives. Spirits reflect both innate brain structures and cultural-psychological structures internalized in the processes of socialization (Winkelman 2000). The importance of culturally construed spirits and traditional interpretative frameworks in divination lies in their ability to place the individual’s circumstances within the cultural cosmological framework that informs experience and situation of self. These frameworks are not generally explicit conceptualizations, but part of an implicit way of viewing and understanding the world. The nature of the experiences of the spirit world provides perspectives for characterizing this spirit-borne information. These spirit world interactions are typically accessed via an altered state of consciousness that is viewed as the means by which relations with spirits are activated and brought to bear upon the current situation; spirit information may also be manifested in bodily sensations.
Altered States of Consciousness in Divination
Altered states of consciousness are central aspects of shamanic divination, although not necessary in all cases. The engagement with the spirits in an altered state of consciousness may involve dramatic changes in behavior and appearance, or a subtle internal personal shift in consciousness apparent only to the trained observer. Whether or not the altered state of consciousness is apparent, engaging with nonordinary modes of cognition and consciousness that enhanced spiritual awareness and intuition is typically part of shamanic divination. Altered states of consciousness that provide access to the spirit world are induced through a variety of methods, including voluntary withdrawal and internal focus of atten
tion; prayers; drumming, chanting, and singing; and smoking tobacco or taking other psychoactive plants. In general, the spirits are seen as speaking to the shaman, rather than speaking through the shaman as in possession. The spirits are often reported as speaking inside the shaman’s head, telling the shaman who is coming, their condition, and whether or not they can be cured.
One divinatory aspect of shamanic altered states of consciousness involves visionary experiences that reveal the nature and cause of the patient’s condition. Shamanic divination also often engages the visionary capacity, where the shaman “sees” the information desired. This includes in some cases a type of x-ray vision, in which the shaman sees within the person’s body to determine the location of the cause of illness. Others see the illness appearing on a screen inside their head, providing details of cause and treatments. Dreams are one aspect of the visionary capacity often used for divination processes. Shamans may also deliberately engage in dream periods over the days prior to or during a healing ceremony to obtain dream guidance on the case.
Body Perceptions
Shamanic divination of illness also employs the shaman’s hands in both physical and psychic modalities. The hands may be merely placed upon the body to gather sensations, or systematically moved over the body. Physically touching the body, massaging and kneading specific areas, and observing the patient’s response to this touching are also used to determine some ailments. The shaman’s hands may also be used as diagnostic instruments without touching the patient’s body. Often the hands are rubbed together, warmed near a fire, or cleansed with ash before extending them toward the patient to feel the condition (Lyon 1996). In some cases, the patients’ own somatic responses to the repertoire of songs the shaman sings may be taken as an indication of their condition. The renowned Navajo hand trembler exemplifies the use of the diagnostic shaman’s own body in receiving information about the nature of a patient’s condition. Peek (1991) points to the prevalent use of the otherwise tabooed left hand in African shamanistic divination, a behavior that would facilitate access to right
hemisphere intuitive, holistic, and analogic modes of cognition.
Divinatory Objects and Systems
Diagnostic skills, including the visionary capacity, may also be engaged through the use of physical objects. Some of the most important are mirrors, shiny reflective objects of stone or metal, bowls of water, bones, rocks, and crystals. Quartz crystals are frequently used as instrument for divining. Crystals may be used in diagnosis as a “lens” for observing the patient’s body, with the cause of disease being manifested within the crystal. Crystals may also be seen as the abode of spirits that could speak to the shaman and provide a diagnosis or other information. Other material systems are observed for their reactions to drumming, dancing, or other natural processes. A variety of objects may be used to engage the psychic sight of the shaman, including both personal objects of the patient and ritual substances selected for their ability to elicit psychic sight on their reflective surfaces (e.g., bowls of water, mica sheets), where the visionary experiences are projected. Shamanistic systems have also used the appearance of animals and natural phenomena as signs relevant to divinatory outcomes. Many divinatory systems also use complex material systems with relatively standardized interpretations (as in the I Ching and Tarot), but these systems are not shamanistic in their basis.
Divination: Rational or Not?
Although divination has often been seen, like other religious behavior, as something irrational, the behavior of those who seek the counsel of diviners rejects the characterizations of irrationality. The use of multiple verification processes in divination procedures attest to petitioners’ efforts to ascertain an empirical and veridical characterization of the situation they confront. Evans-Pritchard’s (1937) classic assessment of divination among the Azande also emphasized its rational character, pointing out how the consultants searched for multiple forms of verification that allowed them to reject inconsistent answers. Those present at the divination often sought diviners far from their villages and maintained their anonymity to avoid revealing information to the diviner. In many
cases clients might not sit down with the diviner until significant information about the case had been revealed, and might take back their consultation fee and leave if significant errors occurred in the divinatory revelations. Diviners might be asked questions designed to test their power. Revelations that were accepted were often subjected to further verification and corroboration, several diviners often being consulted and their revelations compared before their divinatory revelations were applied to make decisions. Concern with the accuracy of divinatory revelations was reflected in practices of having the diviner reveal information that was verifiable by previous experience.
It seems, then, that the use of divinatory processes in shamanism and other magico-reli-gious practices engages a number of different modalities of information acquisition and communication. Science may eventually explain many of these processes and illustrate their empirical and rational basis. But for shamanic traditions, divination remains preeminently a mode of communication with the divine in an effort to reach a real truth. For the scientist, divination must remain an effort to incorporate the extraordinary, unknown sources of knowledge beyond our immediate access within the social context of the interpersonal dynamics, conflicts, and psychodynamic constellations of the participants.
Michael Winkelman
See also: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Shamans; Maya Bone Divination; Neuropsychology of Shamanism; Quiche and Zuni Divination
References and further reading:
Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 1937. Witchcraft,
Oracles, and Magic among the Azande.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hunt, H. 1995. On the Nature of Consciousness. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lyon, William. 1996. Encyclopedia of Native
American Healing. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.
Moore, Omar. 1957. “Divination—A New
Perspective.” American Anthropologist 59, no. 1: 69-74.
Park, George. 1963. “Divination and its Social Contexts.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 93, no. 2: 195-209.
Peek, Philip, ed. 1991. African Divination Systems: Ways of Knowing. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Vollweiler, Lothar, and Alison Sanchez. 1983. “Divination—’Adaptive’ from Whose Perspective?” Ethnology 22, no. 3: 193-209.
Winkelman, Michael. 1992. Shamans, Priests and Witches: A Cross-cultural Study of Magico-Religious Practitioners. Anthropological Research Papers no. 44. Tempe: Arizona State University.
———. 1997. “Altered States of Consciousness and Religious Behavior.” Pp. 393-428 in Anthropology of Religion: A Handbook of Method and Theory. Edited by S. Glazier.
Westport, CT: Greenwood.
———. 2000. Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey.
DRAMATIC PERFORMANCE
IN SHAMANISM
An elderly Korean shaman was once asked about a shaman’s powers as she sees them. She said that a shaman is, on the one hand, a person through whom the gods and ancestral spirits truly speak and, on the other, a good actor. “It’s like a stage,” she said. These two aspects of a shaman’s powers seem contradictory, but they are not. Shamanist ritual is inherently dramatic. It aims at a direct manifestation of a supernatural presence (Kirby 1975, 2). Its mimetic activity, feats of wonder, music, and dance make the gods directly present before our eyes. It brings to the stage the inherently dramatic encounter between human beings and the gods and spirits that constitutes the core belief of a shamanist community.
A study of shamanist ritual as dramatic performance does not imply denigration of whatever extraordinary psychic or spiritual powers shamans may have, nor does it suggest that the spirits they invoke are mere figments of the dramatic imagination. Such a study highlights the fact that whatever powers shamans have to manipulate spirits are complemented by an artist’s skill in manipulating the imagination of persons in attendance (Lommel 1967, 8). It calls attention to the fact that whatever extraordinary powers of healing they may have, they commonly achieve their effect with the aid of the ordinary powers of an accomplished stage artist.
It stresses that whatever private visions shamans have in a state of trance attain significance for the community when given concrete expression in public performance. Such a study approaches ritual in the way a dramatic critic analyzes any dramatic performance. It investigates how mimetic and symbolic activity, music and dance, physical setting, the structure and emotional atmosphere of the rite, and tensions between various elements and parts create the significance of what is taking place and heighten the effect the rite has on those present.
In the still alive and flourishing shamanism of the Korean peninsula, a ritual may be a simple, private affair of a lone worshipper chanting in the night on a mountain by a candle burning before an unusual rock outcropping, a spring, or a gnarled old tree. Often, however, it is a highly theatrical event consisting of a series of episodes that lasts hours or days, takes account of the natural setting and social context, employs colorful costumes, props, and numerous shamans and musicians, and includes the whole neighborhood for an audience. A Korean shaman ushers in a segment of a rite to deal with family problems in the metropolis of Seoul with a dance, first slow then fast, that creates a sacred atmosphere and may induce a trancelike state. Most commonly a woman, she summons the spirits and is believed to serve as their medium in interaction with the family. With an old-style military uniform, weapons, and a fierce demeanor, she exhibits the authority of the General Spirit. With a whining voice and peevish gestures, she gives theatrical life to the spirit of an ancestor who died as a young girl. In the role of the Mountain Spirit in a shaman’s initiation rite, she may shed tears of sympathy for the hard life the new shaman is entering. As the soul of a deceased father in a rite for the dead, she may give the son a big hug and then comically upbraid him and his wife for not yet giving him a grandson.
In northern China, a Manchu Han Army clan rite may dramatize the opening of the gates of the other world, in a midnight episode in which a male shaman raises two large sword blades in the air and hammers them together. The next day, the clan gods appear. With silver hairpins stuck in his cheeks to suggest a boar’s tusks, a shaman thought to be possessed by the Wild Boar God shakes and gets stiff. As the God of the Underworld, he appears with a
mourning cloth hung around his neck. Taking the role of a Tang dynasty emperor, he reenacts the sorrow that the emperor felt when his general fell in battle. As the Hawk God, he waves his arms and jumps about lightly. As the Tiger God seeking his prey, he prowls around on the ground (Guo and Honggang 2001, 85—89).
To say, “It’s a stage,” sounds like saying, “It’s all just playacting,” and for many young Manchu, it is said to be just that. In Korea, however, the playacting reinforces what participants take as quite real—the presence of the spirits and their desire to be of help in time of need.
Nonetheless, neither the shaman nor others present take the performance as real in the way a child would. They seem well aware of the element of theatrical play. Like the private hallucinations that an initiate may have in the process of becoming a shaman, the public drama of a ritual performance reinforces a sense of the reality of the spirit world. Now, however, the shaman does not hallucinate. Her dramatic gifts are conscious and controlled. She may say in a rite, “I am the General Spirit” or “I am the Mountain Spirit”; but she does not suffer from dissociative illusions like a schizophrenic who thinks he is Jesus Christ.
The dynamics of shamanist ritual are said to be rooted in a shaman’s trance possession by a god (Kirby 1975, 2); but, as has been pointed out with regard to Korean rites (Choi 1987, 35—36), it seems truer to say that these dynamics are rooted in the shaman’s performance and in the faith and expectations of the worshipping community. Scholars debate at length about the state of a shaman’s consciousness during a rite, but participants in a Korean family rite manifest little concern about the state of the shaman. They could care less about distinctions between possessed mediumship and simple role-playing. They simply seek a vivid dramatization of the ancestors’ presence. In the Chinese tradition of shamanist masked drama called Luoxi, the key factor in making a god present is said to be simply the putting on of the god’s mask (Xue 1996, 2). Indeed, to the mythic mind, role-playing in any such drama never has a “merely representative” significance. Possessed or not, in a trance or not, the performer “does not merely imitate the god”; he is “transformed into him and fuses with him” (Cassirer 1955, 238).
In any case, in evoking the presence and power of the gods, a shaman shows his ability as a performer, not only in vivid mimetic roleplaying, but also in dazzling feats of wonder (Eliade 1989, 551). Korean shamans balance a pig’s carcass on a huge trident, do a lightningswift knife dance, or dance barefoot on high-placed chopper blades. Manchu shamans and clan representatives run over burning coals. Taiwanese shamanist mediums dance barefoot over fire fed by paper “spirit money” and beat themselves to the point of drawing blood.
Of course, spectacular feats in themselves do not constitute a sign of the gods’ presence. The acrobats of Beijing Opera and the trapeze artists of the Moscow Circus perform more astounding feats without any pretension to divine power. A shaman’s feats may arouse wonder in anyone; but they constitute a sacred sign only for a community of believers who expect such a sign (Wilson 1980, 29). Belief in the spirits empowers a rite, and the rites achieve their prime purpose in fostering this belief. Among the Yi people of southwest China, a family sometimes has a shamanist figure perform a rite to seek the protection of the ancestral spirits for one of the family who goes away to school. A Yi student has said that what distinguishes him from other Chinese university students is that he has an abiding sense of this protection.
The Yi pride themselves on their indigenous writing system, and their rites are said to center on the poetic, perhaps magical, force of the dialogical texts chanted in the rites. But in the main, a shamanist culture is not a verbal culture. It is the “culture of gestures” that the twentieth-century French drama critic Antonin Artaud saw as providing the life force of any powerful theatrical experience (1958, 108). The spirits’ words constitute the core of a rite, but theatrical gestures empower these words.
Healing Rituals
Some shamanist performances use the language of gesture to dramatize, not the presence of the gods or spirits, but the shaman’s act of healing. A Manchu Han Army healing ritual can become a playful game. Wearing grotesque paper masks and clothed in sheepskin, persons taking the part of ghosts grab about fiercely at participants while spectators watch in glee. The shaman, or perhaps a god possessing the
shaman, fights off the ghosts. Then he enacts an attack of stomach pains, grabbing at his stomach; and the ghosts pull out of his stomach something shaped like the large intestine. Finally, the shaman chases them away, thrashing at them with bunches of straw (Guo and Honggang 2001, 90—91).
A shaman from the central Siberian Republic of Tuva has said that in his tradition, shamans may speak with a family’s ancestral spirits, but that they dread the possibility of actual possession by such spirits. Nonetheless, the healing rite of a shaman from Tuva or neighboring Khakassia can also become an eye-catching dramatic performance. The shaman appears to draw out evil pestilence from a patient’s body with his fingers or suck it out with his mouth and spit it out.
Korean shamans sometimes perform acts of ritual magic in a more symbolic kind of theater. They symbolize release from the knotted pains and frustrations of a person’s past in simple but evocative dancelike gestures, as they release large loop-knots tied in a long white cloth. Sometimes they dramatize the cure of someone suffering from anxiety, or “soul loss,” by spraying a mouthful of water over the patient or using knives to press the seventh vertebrae, where the “lost soul” is thought to return. The effectiveness of such rites in no way depends on spectacular activity performed in an altered state of consciousness. It depends on simple symbolic gestures and the prayers and support of those present, all of which reinforce the patient’s world of trusted, harmonious relation-ships—human and divine.
In other Korean rites, theater and worship become one in a much more lively form of dramatic psychotherapy. Speaking the words of the spirits and vividly dramatizing their presence, the shaman brings a family’s troubles and grief out in the open, provides objectifying perspectives on their problems, and encourages release from pent-up frustrations in tears and laughter.
One such rite was offered for the recently deceased mother of six married children. In life, the relations between the mother and one of the daughter-in-laws had been strained. In the course of the rite, the mother’s spirit was thought to speak through the mediumship of the daughter-in-law as she held a branch of oak that symbolized the deceased. The branch began to shake, and the daughter-in-law shrieked
Shamaness performing rite, ca. 1980s-1990s.
Mount Samak, Seoul, South Korea. (Earl & Nazima Kowall/Corbis)
and went into a trance, speaking sometimes in the mother’s voice, sometimes in her own. At one point, the daughter-in-law said she was sorry, and the mother promised to give assistance from the grave. Finally, the daughter-inlaw came out of her trance. The whole experience was traumatic for her and frightening for all present, but it gave her a unique opportunity to seek her mother-in-law’s forgiveness and personal healing.
In a similar rite offered by a widow one summer for her deceased husband, the proceedings took a humorous turn when the husband asked for his old watch, hat, and clothes and then became irritated when the clothes given him were heavy winter clothes. He cried out, “Where can I go on this sultry summer day with these cotton clothes on?” Later, he asked for medicine for stomach pains, to which his wife replied, “You’ve already died. Isn’t that enough? Why
do you, a dead person, want some medicine?” (Yi 1988, 167-168).
Whatever extraordinary powers the shaman offering such rites has, the performance itself goes a long way to achieve cathartic healing, family harmony and well-being, and a sense of the continued presence of the deceased. Belief in this presence plays an essential role in the healing process, but techniques of participative drama, the public use of the stage comedian’s humor, and theatrical play provide liberating, objectifying perspectives on the family’s situation that modern psychotherapists might very well learn from.
Communal Preventive Rituals
East Coast Korean village celebrations seeking village harmony, health, and abundance in fishing and farming constitute a kind of communal preventive medicine. In the key symbolic event, villagers and a family troupe of what are termed hereditary shamans and musicians gather at the village shrine by the sea or in a grove of trees to summon the village ancestral god. The god is believed to show his or her presence in the shaking, sometimes quite violently, of a tall bamboo “spirit pole” held by a villager, who may go into a trance. The shaman asks the advice of the god regarding the well-being of the village and interprets responses manifested in the shaking pole.
For the preservation of the people’s belief, it is important that the pole shake or that the one holding it go strangely into trance. But the effect of the rite does not depend only on this miraculous feat, and its significance cannot be reduced to the degree of altered state of consciousness of the person holding the pole. As participants join in a buoyant round dance, the clear April sky, the towering mountains, and the picturesque shrine on a knoll above the sea crystallize around the spirit pole, its white flag fluttering toward the sky. The result is an evocative “poetry in space,” such as Artaud proposes as the ideal of any vital theatrical performance (1958, 38). Everything works together to create a sense of harmonious union among villagers, their gods, and the natural surroundings. Performed by skilled musicians, the subtle rhythmic interplay of drum, shrill pipe, clamorous gong, and chant draws worshipers musically, moreover, into a heightened, Dionysian
sense of the celebration of life in harmony with the gods. This communal heightened state of consciousness is of much greater significance than the momentary state of trance of the one person holding the spirit pole.
So is the harmonious play that unfolds throughout the days of the celebration. While some shamans perform individual divination rites for families on the side, the shaman troupe as a whole engages the villagers and their gods in playful entertainment in the form of moving folktales, lively song and dance, eating and drinking. The genius of the Korean shamanist imagination as manifested in the rite as a whole has little to do with trance or ecstatic vision, but much to do with harmonizing play. It has the boldness to envision contact with divinity in terms of lively Korean banter, shared laughter, and playful entertainment that bring the gods down to the level of neighborly camaraderie and raise the everyday toil of fishing and farming into the realm of sacred play.
Throughout man’s history, religious worship has been a vehicle for play (Norbeck 1976, 98). Korean shamanist rites commonly begin, not with “Let us pray,” but with “Let’s play.” A Mongolian rite may honor the god by incorporating a wrestling match and the eagle dance of the wrestlers. The Chinese Luoxi draws upon the rich heritage of the mask carver’s art to enhance the sense of the presence of the gods while entertaining both the gods and human beings (Xue 1996, 28).
At the same time, both Luoxi and the farcical skits that may end a Korean village rite exemplify the evolution of pure theatrical entertainment out of religious worship. In a mode of drama that stands poles apart from the symbolic event of the greeting of the god in the spirit pole in the Korean rite, the lone male shaman performing these comic skits portrays not the gods, but the down-to-earth adventures of figures from village life—schoolmaster, fisherman, a blind man, a woman giving birth. In the skit portraying a fisherman, his boat gets caught in a storm. In one version, he calls to the gods for help and is saved. In a darker version that seems at odds with the trust in the gods that the village rite as a whole seeks to foster, he calls for help, but the gods do not hear. As is often the case in the risky business of fishing even today, he drowns. In the episode portraying childbirth, a woman about to give birth
calls in her pain to the Grandmother Spirit of Childbirth. The baby, in the form of an orange plastic water dipper, is a cute baby boy. The shaman evokes a burst of laughter from spectators when he claims the baby was fathered by one of the respected village officials. He then chants a poetic lullaby asking the baby, “Where have you come from? Did you fall from heaven? Have you come wrapped in the summer clouds that hide the steep peaks?” (Ch’oe and So 1982, 350). In one version, the skits end here; but in the darker version, the help of the gods is again of no avail. The mother prays for the child’s health, but the boy takes sick and suddenly dies.
Shamanic Performance as a Unified Rite
A study of shamanist ritual as dramatic performance considers not just isolated segments of a rite. Like the study of any dramatic work, it considers the interrelationship of parts as they form a coherent, well-unified movement; and it sees how ambivalent tensions and seeming contradictions between parts add to the rite’s power and meaning. In themselves, the skits discussed here constitute examples of theatrical entertainment evolving out of religious ritual; but they have an integral role in the religious thrust of the celebration as a whole. They bring the everyday realities of the villagers’ lives into the ambiance of the gods’ blessing and protection, as symbolized in the encounter with the god in the spirit pole. The dark versions of the final skits stand in marked tension with the buoyant atmosphere surrounding that encounter; but they ensure that villagers celebrate their belief in the presence of the gods with a mature, realistic awareness that the gods’ help does not always insure a happy ending.
A midsummer night’s rite performed by a band of shamans and religious practitioners from the central Siberian Republic of Khakassia provides a simpler example of how various segments of a rite form a unified thrust. In the evening, on the hills above the clear-flowing Abakan River, the shamans performed a traditional purifying ritual that brought a disparate group of local inhabitants and foreign participants into harmony with one another and nature around a fire. The fire and the simple, unsophisticated drumming of the shamans provided the focus of attention, while a sheep
was slain off to the side. After midnight, all went down by the river for the second stage of the rite. A fire was lit on a small raft and sent floating down the river as a sacrificial gift to the Master of the Waters in thanksgiving for a spring free from flooding. Each participant was urged to make a prayer, and the fire, floating away into the star-filled night, seemed to carry the prayers into the darkness and bring all present into harmony with the cosmos. All then spent the night sharing the meat of the slain sheep as they waited to greet the dawn in the final rite. This rite was said to be traditional, but it could also well be a New Age shamanic ritual. All joined once more in a circle. Then, recalling their prayers of the night before, they followed a shaman ringing a small bell up a small hill to greet the sunrise and offer these prayers in the presence of the new sun. Except for one woman who at times seemed in a trance, the whole constituted a consciously organized, well-integrated symbolic event.
Of course, careful organization and a coherent integration of disparate parts are not the prime criteria for a successful shamanist performance. In June 1996, a group of Buryat shamans in Eastern Siberia performed a daylong sheep sacrifice on the shores of Lake Baikal to seek communal blessing and prosperity. As a dramatic performance, the rite was diffuse and lacked the clear, coherent organization of the Khakassian rite just described. Nonetheless, after many years of not being able to perform the rite under Communist rule, the belief and prayers of the local participants were probably more sincere than that of the disparate participants in the Khakassian rite. In the sublime setting of Lake Baikal, huge like the sea in the midst of pristine stretches of birch and pine forest, the simple gesture of raising arms toward the Master of the Lake became itself a moving dramatic performance. Such a simple ritual action suffices to create a sense of the cosmic drama underlying all shamanist rites, that of the movement of human beings to divinity and, it is believed, divinity to human beings.
After a program of Communist education in the middle of the twentieth century, the shamans of the Oroqen (Orochun) People, a small nation of hunters at the northern tip of China, decided to send their gods away forever. They did so in a grand rite of several days of dancing and drumming; and since then, they
say, they have never celebrated a full ritual. But the simple act of carving the face of the Mountain God on a tree and doing homage to him as it is still performed before and after a hunt likewise constitutes a dramatic action fraught with meaning. This miniature dramatic performance preserves a belief system and worldview in which human beings are at one with nature and the gods, and seeking one’s livelihood by hunting is itself a form of prayer.
Rites for the Dead
A Korean shaman from the southern port city of Pusan once inveighed against the elaborate performances of Seoul shamans in the north as nothing but empty theater; and some rites performed in modern Seoul theaters probably justify such criticism. But rites for the dead exemplify the fusion of worship with drama of a shamanist performance at its best. (The discussion that follows draws on Kister 1997.)
Korean rites for the dead seek both to send the deceased to the “good place” in the other world and provide a measure of peace for the bereaved family. As a well-integrated dramatic unity, they project the sense of inevitable forward movement toward a destined end that is said to be the mark of a fully developed dramatic work (Langer 1953, 307). From the very beginning, props in the background point toward the destiny of the deceased. In a Seoul rite, there is a flower-covered “gate of thorns” to the other world; in an east coast rite, a colorful paper-craft boat and white cloth symbolize the watery path or bridge to the “other shore.” All the mimetic, psychodramatic, and symbolic activity of the rite moves steadfastly toward the climax, in which the deceased is sent to his or her destined end in the “good place.”
A Seoul-area rite regularly includes a playful cathartic episode in which the Messenger Spirit from the World of Darkness comes to snatch away the deceased to judgment for sin. As portrayed by the shaman, the wildly flailing Messenger Spirit sometimes evokes the terror of death in a way that threatens all present. On other occasions, his presence evokes billows of healing laughter that dissipate some of death’s terror and pain. Mouth stuffed with rice cake, he charges forth to lasso the soul of the deceased, symbolized by white papers attached to
paper-craft flowers on the altar. The family of the deceased gleefully tries to fend him off in playful battle.
At the end of the rite, humor gives way to sorrow; psychodrama gives way to symbols; and play yields to spatial poetry. In a Seoul rite, the shaman chants the tale of the Abandoned Princess Spirit, the god who leads persons through death. Dressed in a princess’ elegant robes, she or he then escorts the deceased, symbolized by white funeral clothes carried by a family member, to the destined end. The shaman does so in a graceful, slow-paced dance around tables of offerings before the flower-covered gate of thorns to the stately music of the drum, cymbals, and pipe. She makes three rounds as a butterfly, three displaying long flowing sleeves in a gesture of leading, three displaying a fan to sweep away evil, and three rounds wielding a knife to cut away obstacles. The “poetry in space” that results transforms the sorrow of separation into an event of beauty and peace. The deceased then takes final leave of the family through the mouth of the shaman, who ends the rite by splitting a long white cloth held out by assistants. Running wildly through the tough cloth, she splits it with her body, demonstrating her spirit-given powers and dramatizing the rupture of death.
A shaman also ends an east coast rite for the dead by splitting a long white cloth. In this case, however, the cloth symbolizes the path to the other world; and she or he splits the cloth with a staff tipped with paper flowers that represents the deceased. The shaman stretches out the cloth and sadly tells the deceased, “Now we must load the boat and you must go.” As an assistant takes down paper flowers and lanterns from the altar, she does a slow-motion dance, imaginatively loading them onto the papercraft boat. She holds the flower-covered staff near the deceased’s family and speaks words of farewell for the deceased. Then with calm, dignified grace, she uses the staff slowly, but firmly, to split the cloth.
This final gesture is basically the same as that which ends a Seoul rite, but it constitutes an evocative spatial poetry that conveys a quite different feeling and has richer significance. It fuses the searing pain of final separation with an image of the flowering of existence. Composed equally of splitting and blossoming, it evokes both a cruel fear that life is ultimately parting
and a soothing hope that death brings fulfillment. Fashioned though it is from the simplest of materials, this ambivalent symbolic gesture speaks an eloquent theatrical language that can move believers and nonbelievers alike. Whatever effect it may be believed to have for the deceased, its impact on those still alive depends just as much on the artistry of the dramatic performance as on faith in the world of the spirits.
Whether complex or simple, well ordered or diffuse, shamanist rituals speak the spatial language of dramatic performance, and any study of these rituals bears its best fruit when it is rooted in this language. As with any drama, the language of the performance itself has an intrinsic significance regardless of the intent or interpretation of any particular shaman, actor, participant, or scholar. As a language of dramatic gesture, it often has its richest meaning and cathartic power when it is multileveled, ambivalent, and, as in this east coast rite, even self-contradictory.
Daniel Kister
See also: Ainu Shamanism; Ancient South Indian Shamanism; Buryat Shamanism; Chinese Shamanism, Contemporary;
Costume, Shaman; Khakass Shamanism; Korean Shamanism; Mongolian Shamanic Tradition and Literature; Shadow Puppetry and Shamanism; Siberian Shamanism; Spirit Possession in Rajasthan
References and further reading:
Artaud, Antonin. 1958. The Theater and Its
Double. Translated by Mary Caroline Richards. New York: Grove.
Cassirer, Ernst. 1955. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Vol. 2, Mythical Thought. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Ch’oe, Chong-yo, and So Tae-sok, eds. 1982. Tonghaean Muga [Mudang Songs from the Coast of the East Sea]. Seoul: Hyong-sol.
Choi, Chungmoo. 1987. “The Competence of Korean Shamans as Performers of Folklore.” Ph.D. diss., Indiana University.
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Guo, Shuyun, and Wang Honggang, eds. 2001. Living Shamans: Shamanism in China.
Shenyang: Liaoning People’s Publishing House.
Kirby, E. T. 1975. Urdrama: The Origins of the Theatre. New York: New York University Press.
Kister, Daniel A. 1994. “Artaudian Aspects of Korean Shamanist Drama.” Pp. 133—145 in Antonin Artaud and the Modern Theater.
Edited by Gene A. Plunka. London: Associated University Presses.
———. 1997. Korean Shamanist Ritual: Symbols and Dramas of Transformation. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.
Langer, Susanne. 1953. Feeling and Form. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Lommel, Andreas. 1967. Shamanism: The Beginnings of Art. Translated by Michael Bullock. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Norbeck, Edward. 1976. “Religion and Human Play.” In World Anthropology: The Realm of the Extra-Human. Vol. 1, Agents and Audiences.
Edited by Agehanda Bharati. The Hague: Mouton.
Turner, Victor. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal.
Wilson, Robert R. 1980. Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel. Philadelphia: Fortress.
Xue, Ruolin, ed. 1996. The Art of Chinese Ritual Masks. Beijing: Jiangxi Fine Arts Publishing House.
Yi, Du-hyun. 1988. “Role Playing Through Trance Possession in Korean Shamanism.” In Shamanism: The Spirit World of Korea. Edited by Richard W. I. Guisso and Chai-shin Yu. Berkeley: Asian Humanities.
DREAMS AND VISIONS
Dreams and visions constitute a large part of shamans’ accounts of their experiences, whether the dreams and visions are at the initial stages of their careers, when the shamans are elected, or during the later period of their lives when the shamans have become firmly established in the community and periodically communicate with the supernatural to heal their patients and to provide messages to their communities. In spite of the widespread presence of dream accounts in shamanic cultures, there is not a uni
fying concept across cultures, primarily because each shamanic society is subject to its own cultural notions about dreams and shamanic traditions. Cultural and religious theories of knowledge expressed in ideas about dreams are analytically distinct from what today we might or might not be able to know of the actual content of the experience. For example, the Western classificatory system separates dreams from visions, whereas in many other societies this classification is blurred, or there is no linguistic or conceptual distinction between them. The language of the Mapuche of Chile, for example, does not distinguish linguistically between dreams and visions (Nakashima Degarrod 1989). On the other hand, many cultures do separate the two and differentiate them linguistically. In some societies, visions occur in full waking consciousness and are thought to be quite different from sleeping dreams. Both dreams and visions can be deliberately sought, so the distinction cannot be a matter of voluntary inducement. It seems clear that dreams and visions, whatever their final definitions, are inextricably linked and that their prevalence in the shamanic discourse matters. Douglass Price-Williams has suggested that what scholars of shamanism have coded variously as dreams or visions can be part of a continuum from a waking to a sleeping state (Price-Williams 1992).
Shamanic visionary experiences are also narratives that are orally communicated by shamans to their communities through a variety of means, such as songs, speeches, diagnoses of illness, storytelling, and informal conversations. Johannes Fabian has observed the communicative value of sharing dreams in a religious context in communities (Fabian 1966). As narratives, shamanic dreams and visions have a communicative value; narrators can send messages by narrating or refraining from narrating dreams and by interpreting dreams with a group with whom there is a shared knowledge of interpretative meanings. Narrators can indicate different meanings by selecting different audiences and contexts of narrations (Herdt 1992). Shamanic discourses about dreams and visions in many societies are valued not only for their different healing, religious, or political meanings but also for their aesthetic value, as these narratives are not transmitted only by the shamans themselves but also by other narrators.
Dreams and the Selection and
Initiation of Shamans
Dreams play an important role in the selection and initiation of shamans. Shamans are commonly selected to take on their profession by inheritance from deceased shamans. For example, shamans from the Paviotso of Nevada were reported to inherit their spirit powers from a deceased shaman relative who urged the dreamer to accept the shamanic calling and power (Park 1934). In other societies, shamans are selected when they exhibit unusual physical characteristics, or they are selected from spontaneous vocation. Whatever the means of shamanic selection, it is primarily through dreams that shamans learn about their calling. Most shamanic societies believe that the refusal of the individuals selected to be shamans will result in future misfortunes to those called into the profession (Krippner 1989).
The ability to dream frequently or to have prophetic dreams are some of the unusual individual characteristics that signal future shamans in many societies. Among the Harney Valley Paiute in North America, the ability to dream is encouraged with the purpose of creating shamans. Parents instill in their sons the desire to become shamans and persuade them to dream. Sons are told what kind of dreams to expect to have in order to become shamans. They warn them also to adhere to the instructions in the dreams carefully. Otherwise the spirits will become angry and punish them by making them ill (Whiting 1950).
Shamanic vocation can be caused by spontaneous dreams or visions. This was the case with Henry Rupert, a Washo shaman who lived at the end of the nineteenth century (Handelman 1967). During his early years he had a series of dreams, which in retrospect marked him off as one who would become a shaman. He would dream specifically of a bear who stared at him. When he looked back at the bear, it would vanish, and then Henry would fly up into the sky to the moon. But it was at the age of seventeen that Henry had his power dream, which signified that he was to become a shaman. In the dream he saw a horned buck, which looked toward the east. A voice told Henry not to kill babies anymore. Henry woke up with a nosebleed while it rained outside. He interpreted this dream in the following way: The conjunc
tion of buck and rain suggested that he could control rain, as the buck was recognized as “boss of the rain.” The cardinal directions in the dream were important symbols. For the Washo there is the belief that the souls of people who have just died travel south, but the path of evil souls is toward the east. Henry interpreted the buck’s action of looking toward the east as meaning that he was being warned against developing potentialities that could become evil. The voice in the dream was recognized as being the voice of a snake. Here the warning was against the indiscriminate taking of life. The rain that he heard on awakening signified to him that water would be his major spirit power. And the nosebleed meant that his dream intended him to have power, as it was the kind of physical reaction associated with the gaining of power. Later, when Henry became a practicing shaman, dreams guided him.
Henry Rupert’s use of a symbolic metaphoric system of dream interpretation to decode his vocational dream exemplifies one of the two major types of interpretation used by shamans in the exercise of their profession, the other being the literal interpretation of dreams, in which dreams are taken at their face value as opposed to the symbolic system in which dreams are interpreted according to a specific system that translates different images as symbols for specific meanings. Douglass Price-Williams and Lydia Nakashima Degarrod found in their cross-cultural study of the use of dreams in forty Amerindian societies that shamans make use of both systems of interpretation, with the exception of the Raramuri, who only make use of the literal system of dream interpretation (PriceWilliams and Nakashima Degarrod 1989).
Shamans undergo physical and emotional transformations in their dreams of initiation. Lydia Nakashima Degarrod found that in the autobiographical narratives of shamanic initiation among the Mapuche of Chile, shamans narrate dreams in which the shamans describe their physical and spiritual transformations after a period of intense emotional and physical suffering (Nakashima Degarrod 1989, 1996, 1998). Shamans not only go through the physical pain and the anguish caused by inexplicable illnesses, but commonly lack emotional or material support from their families, either because they are orphans or simply because their families do not believe in their calling. In this
context, shamans can have two types of dreams: dreams of an explanatory character, in which supernatural beings explain to the novices the reasons for their inexplicable illness and announce their shamanic calling, which tend to occur during the worst part of the physical and emotional suffering; and dreams of a rewarding nature, in which gods or other supernatural beings provide the novices with their shamanic training and grant them power occurring at the end of the initiatory period.
In these autobiographical narratives Nakashima Degarrod found that these dreams become the sites in which the final transformation of the novices occur—they not only become shamans with all the necessary knowledge and power, but they also overcome all the negative physical and intellectual traits described at the beginning of the autobiographical accounts. Shamans who, prior to the dreams, described themselves as being weak, ugly, or viewed as stupid proclaimed their strength, beauty, and intelligence after the dreams. This explanatory and rewarding nature characterizes most of the dreams that shamans narrate during the course of their profession. In the exercise of their profession shamans use their dreams to receive information and power to fight the agents of evil (wekufe) and they receive explanations for their own personal suffering and the suffering of the community at times of natural or political crisis.
Dreams of initiation may be thematically patterned. Common themes widely reported are dismemberment, death, and rebirth. These themes have been described in the initiatory dreams of Siberian, Eskimo, Australian Aborigines, and South American shamans (Eliade 1989). In these dreams, shamans undergo different forms of death, which may include the extraction of their viscera and contemplation of their own skeleton and their actual rebirth. For example, an Eskimo man selected to become a shaman reported a dream in which he was devoured by a bear, chewed up, and then finally spat out (Roheim 1952).
The Vision Quest and Shamanic Initiation
The term vision quest refers both to the experiences of a young person being initiated into adult society and to the shamanic initiation. It
is frequently associated with the Guardian Spirit complex of Native American societies (Benedict 1923). Hardship is a necessary preparation for both initiation visions and shamanic experiences. All societies that involve the vision quest have the corollary belief that certain kinds of experiences will facilitate significant dreams and visions. It is generally believed, for example, that the quest necessitates a period of social isolation, coupled with increased vigilance and alertness. Lonely vigils on mountaintops or in forests or desolate places are advocated. Repetitive singing or praying is encouraged. Even the playing of repetitive games is sometimes undertaken in order to promote monotony.
In contrast to this passive approach of meditation and isolation, there is an opposite group of methods that encourages hyperactivity. Excitation, stress, and fatigue are the factors involved. A particular Salish group in the Pacific Northwest coastal area encourages bodily exercises and general exaltation of the senses. There are reports from the Southern Coast Salish of children being sent out on their vision quests in stormy weather and in thunderstorms, or being encouraged to dive into shark-infested waters (Jilek 1974). It is worth mentioning that hallucinogens are not used in these cultures of the Pacific Northwest. All methods of facilitating vision inducement involve harsh physical methods. Sleep deprivation is common. So are methods of dehydration or fasting. Sometimes vomiting is encouraged through the use of purgative plants to cleanse the system. Hyperventilation is sometimes promoted through the use of continual diving or other means of inducing exhaustion. The methods sometimes extend to exposing oneself to extreme temperatures, and even to self-inflicted pain. All these methods tend to create vivid mental imagery.
Charles Wagley (1977) described the novice shamans of Tapirape of Brazil as seeking out dreams as part of their shamanic training. Annually during the late dry season all the young aspiring shamans gathered each evening in the central plaza of the village and discussed their dreams. A novice would sit near a fully-fledged shaman who was his mentor and be given smoke from his mentor’s pipe until he vomited. The practice of “eating smoke,” as it was called, persisted until the novice fell into a trance and became ill from the tobacco. During this trance the novice might dream. The practice was con
tinued over a period of two to three hours. When the novice returned to his hammock, he would be expected to dream during the night. It was a difficult time for these novices. They had to refrain from bathing during this period. They could not eat certain animals, as they might be expected to encounter them during their dreams. There was also sexual abstinence. Frequently Tapirape shamans would have dangerous dreams, at which stage they would become uncontrollable, running wildly through the village in a trance breaking things and perhaps killing animals.
Dream Helpers
The notion of the dream helper is widespread among Native American groups, though it has been best described in south-central California (Applegate 1967). Essentially the idea is that a supernatural being appears to the dreamer or visionary as a spirit offering power and protection. A song or a talisman is given to the dreamer, with advice on how to use the gift. Direct warnings may also be given. A shaman may further be given skills and knowledge on how to deal with witchcraft. A lay person may be given skills for hunting or even gambling.
The dream helper may manifest itself in dreams in different guises. It is usually in the form of an animal. It is thought of as the archetypal spirit of the animal species, rather than as a specific individual. An animal helper is actually the spirit of one of the First People, as they are called, who at the end of mythic times turned into the animals as we know them today. Owl, for example, is embodied in each individual member of the owl species, but Owl himself still lives in mythic times. Although they mostly appear in the form of animals, the dream helper can also appear as a ghost, a dwarf, or a water monster, or it may be a natural force personified.
There are basically two ways for an individual to acquire a dream helper, through drugs or through fasting and night bathing. The dream helper may be directly sought, as in the vision quest, but it can also appear spontaneously and unbidden.
There is another kind of dream helper, found among the Yurok in northern California. Here the shamans base their power on objects that reside in their own bodies (Kroeber 1925).
Theses are objects that would prove fatal in the body of a non-shaman. The acquisition of these magical objects is due to a dream in which a spirit either gives the object to the shaman or places it directly into the shaman’s body. The object causes pains to the shaman, whose task is to be able to maintain the lethal object. The fulfillment of that task is the achievement which marks a shaman.
Dreams and Healing
Dreams are a frequent means of diagnosing what it is that is ailing a sick person. If the source is a malevolent being, or a human person wishing the victim ill (as in sorcery), then the dream can reveal the identity of such a being or person. Furthermore, the dream can be used to identify the nature of the medicines to be employed with the sick person. These medicines are usually plants. The kind of plant, its location, and time to be picked can be provided to a shaman or healer by dreams.
Illness can also be induced in dreams in several ways. One of these is through a supernatural force that creates illness directly. Contact with dead people in dreams can also induce illness, not necessarily because of any malicious intention by the dead person. And sometimes just a bad dream has been sufficient to create illness. The activity of dreaming, therefore, is sometimes associated with danger, as a person can become ill through it.
Shamans largely cure through the art of dreaming. They do this often with the help of a dream helper or spirit with whom they enjoy a symbiotic relationship. Frequently the spirit specifies actions to be undertaken by the shaman subsequent to the dream that will facilitate the healing. Such actions sometimes are elaborated into full-scale rituals.
A frequent motif in the teaching of healers through dreams is the giving of instructions for the dreamer to carry out an action while awake. Usually a spirit or an ancestor or sometimes an animal declares in the dream that the dreamer should do something. A Blackfoot shaman learned in a dream how to cure different illnesses (Wissler 1912). A man appeared in his dream and told him that he would give him his body. The dreamer was told that he must carve the man’s image in wood and carry it with him. Whenever anyone had a hemorrhage, the im
age of this spirit-man from the dream must be put on the hemorrhaging person’s body, and the hemorrhage would stop. The Blackfoot man said that this dream had given him the power to cure wounds, to heal disorders of the bowels, and to stop hemorrhaging. Another example comes from a Kwakiutl shaman during a great influenza epidemic (Boas 1921). The shaman himself was ill from this sickness when he had a dream of a wolf helping him. In the dream the wolf came into his house and told the shaman he should get into the river both morning and evening. He had to sit in the river and pour water from a bucket over both sides of his neck. More precisely he had to pour two buckets of water on the right side of his neck, then two buckets on the left side of the neck. He should do this for four days. This was to cure him of the influenza. Then he was told to do the same for others who were sick.
Many other groups practice various kinds of incubation rituals in order to have dreams for healing. Kwakiutl shamans were known to induce dreams before going to sleep by concentrating on an article belonging to a sick person as a means of diagnosing an illness (Boas 1921). Chippewa shamans went to a shake lodge in order to get dreams to diagnose illnesses (Levi 1956).
The shamans of the Sharanahua Indians of eastern Peru enter the dream world of their patients in order to heal them (Siskind 1973). They are aided by taking the hallucinogenic drug, ayahuasca. Their treatment is effected through curing songs. The choice of songs is dictated by the dreams of the patients and their type of symptoms. The patient reports dream images that coincide with the songs that the shaman knows. The shaman asks the patient about his dreams and also about his symptoms. A hallucinogenic brew is then cooked in the evening. When it is cooled and ready, the shaman and other men drink it. The men chant and the shaman sings a curing song. A vision then appears to the shaman of the image from the dream of the sick man. As he experiences the vision, the shaman openly speaks of it to the others.
There is a malevolent side of dreaming too. Tapirape shamans have the power of doing damage to the vulnerable souls of people while they sleep. A shaman called Panteri was reported to engage in a dream battle with an
other shaman. In his dream he would travel in his canoe to the top of a high mountain. From this vista he would look around until he could see the soul of his shaman enemy, whom Panteri suspected of sorcery. Panteri would then throw his headdress, which would wrap itself around the soul of his enemy, carrying him off into the sky (Wagley 1977).
Psychological Healing
The Ute of Colorado and Utah and the seventeenth-century Iroquois are known for their use of dreams, which have been considered in contemporary times to approximate modern psychoanalytic practices (Price-Williams and Nakashima Degarrod 1989; Opler 1959; Wallace 1958). It has been considered that the Ute perceived dreaming as “emotionalized striving.” The Ute shaman would dissect a dream in terms of the wishes, attitudes, and motivations of the dreamer. When living relatives appeared in a dream, the shaman would analyze the relationship with the dreamer for rivalries and resentments. Ute shamans and sick people confided that dreaming often reflected life problems in a distorted or delusional way. Dreams were thought by the Ute to show evidence of dominant drives and motivations. Marvin Opler, who studied the Ute fifty years ago, considered the Ute’s own idea of dreams was that in the dream world the individual mind was free to roam or imagine, and its fantasies revealed tendencies toward the disguised expression of unconscious wishes. This is almost identical to psychoanalytical theory, and it is difficult to know whether this interpretation represents Opler’s own summarizing of Ute ideas or whether this was independently the Ute position. Dreams of deceased relatives, labeled by the Ute as Ghost Dreams, also were regarded in a psychological light. The ghost was blamed for returning and troubling the dreamer, and the latter was advised by the shaman to cease worrying about the dead relative and to focus on the tasks of the living.
Shamanic Political Discourse
Dream and vision reports can transmit political messages and provide aid to a community undergoing communal crises. Lydia Nakashima Degarrod has found that the Mapuche shamans
of Chile narrate their dreams to their communities to provide messages from their gods and ancestors at times of natural disasters and political chaos. She observed that from 1985 to 1987, the last years of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, was a period of strong political repression when large public gatherings were often prohibited, and a new law had been passed that promoted individual ownership of land and that threatened to break the Mapuche communal land holdings (Nakashima Degar-rod 1996, 1998). During this period the shamans of several communities defied authorities by calling for the performance of community rituals that brought together hundreds of people. They were able to ask for the performance of these traditional rituals by narrating dreams in which their gods and ancestors explained the miseries that the Mapuche people were experiencing as a result of the people’s deviation from the traditional norms.
The shamans in their roles as peumafe, “special dreamers,” receive in their dreams explanations for catastrophes from their gods and ancestors and tend to view any form of catastrophe being caused by nature or society as a punishment for the Mapuche’s deviation from the traditional behavior. The shamans receive specific instructions about the management and performance of rituals to appease the anger of the gods and ancestors. Because the Mapuche live in an area known for intense seismic activity and other natural disasters, the shamans’ activity in their role as special dreamers is rather often called for. Although Mapuche shamans do not have a permanent position in the political organization of their communities, their participation at times of stress is important because through their dreams they provide the divine rules according to which the leaders keep the tribal law functioning—rules that define traditional and ideal behavior.
Lydia Nakashima Degarrod
See also: Ayahuasca Ritual Use; Dreams and Shamanism; Mapuche Shamanism; Peruvian Shamans
References and further reading:
Applegate, Richard. 1967. Atishwin: The Dream Helper in South-Central California. Socorro, NM: Ballena Press.
Benedict, Ruth. 1923. The Concept of the Guardian Spirit in North America. Memoirs
of the American Anthropological Association, no. 29. Menasha, WI: American Anthropological Association.
Boas, Franz. 1921. “Ethnology of the Kwakiutl.” Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 35: 43—794.
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Fabian, Johannes. 1966. “Dreams and Charisma, ’Theories of Dreams’ in the Jamaa-Movement (Congo).” Anthropos 61: 544—560.
Handelman, Don. 1967. “The Development of a Washo Shaman.” Ethnology 6: 444—464.
Herdt, Gilbert. 1992. “Selfhood and Discourse in Sambia Dream Sharing.” Pp. 55-85 in Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations. Edited by Barbara Tedlock.
Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
Jilek, Wolfgang. 1974. Salish Indian Mental Health and Culture Change: Psychohygienic and Therapeutic Aspects of the Guardian Spirit Ceremonial. Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston of Canada.
Krippner, Stanley. 1989. “The Use of Dreams in Shamanic Traditions.” Pp. 371-381 in Shamanism Past and Present Part 2. Edited by Mihaly Hoppal and Otto von Sadovsky.
Budapest: International Society for TransOceanic Research.
Kroeber, A. L. 1925. “The Yurok.” Handbook of the Indians of California, Bureau of American Ethnology 78: 1-97, 112-120.
———. 1951. “The Yurok.” In The California Indians—A Source Book. Edited by Robert F. Heizer and M. A. Whipple. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Levi, Carolissa M. 1956. Chippewa Indians of Yesterday and Today. New York : Pageant Press.
Nakashima Degarrod, Lydia. 1989. “Dream Interpretation Among The Mapuche Indians Of Chile.” Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Dissertation Information Service.
———. 1996. “Mapuche: Dream Interpretation and Ethnic Consciousness.” Pp. 237-264 in Portraits of Culture. Edited by David Levinson. Paramus, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
————. 1998. “Female Shamanism and the Mapuche Transformation into Christian Chileans.” Religion 28: 339-350.
————. 2001. “Aesthetics and Politics in Chilean Mapuche Autobiographical Shamanic Discourse.” Paper presented at the Indigenous Amazonia at the Millennium: Politics and Religion Conference at Tulane University.
Opler, Marvin. 1959. “Dream Analysis in Ute Indian Therapy.” Pp. 97—110 in Culture and Mental Health. Edited by Marvin Opler. New York: McMillan.
Park, Willard. 1934. “Paviotso Shamanism.” American Anthropologist 36: 99—103.
Price-Williams, Douglass. 1992. “The Waking Dream in Ethnographic Perspective.” Pp. 246—262 in Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations. Edited by Barbara Tedlock. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
Price-Williams, Douglass and Lydia Nakashima Degarrod. 1989. “Communication, Context, and Use of Dreams in Amerindian Societies.” Journal of Latin American Lore 15: 195—209.
Roheim, Geza. 1952. The Gates of the Dream. New York: International Universities Press.
Siskind, Janet. 1973. “Visions and Cures Among the Sharanahua.” Pp. 28—39 in Hallucinogens and Shamanism. Edited by Michael Harner. New York: Oxford University Press.
Spier, Leslie. 1933. Yuman Tribes of the Gila River. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wagley, Charles. 1977. Welcome of Tears: The Tapirape Indians of Central Brazil. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
Wallace, Anthony F. C. 1958. “Dreams and the Wishes of the Soul: A Type of Psychoanalytic Theory Among the Seventeenth-Century Iroquois.” American Anthropologist 60: 234-247.
Whiting, Beatrice. 1950. “Paiute Sorcery: Sickness and Social Control.” Pp. 27-66 in Culture, Disease, and Healing. Edited by D. Landy. New York: Macmillan.
Wissler, Clark. 1912. “Ceremonial Bundles of the Blackfoot Indians.” American Museum of Natural History. Anthropological Papers 2: 71-85.
DRUGS
See Entheogens (Psychedelic Drugs) and Shamanism
DRUMMING IN SHAMANISTIC RITUALS
The drum is used in a variety of ways in shamanist rituals; it may serve as (1) a rhythm instrument, (2) a divination table, (3) a “speaker” for communicating with the spirits, (4) a spirit-catcher, (5) a spirit boat, (6) a purifying device, (7) the shaman’s mount.
To illustrate these functions of the shaman’s drum, it will be relevant to summarize three representative shamanist rituals for distinctive purposes as practiced by different peoples of Siberia and Japan: The first of these accounts describes the descent of the Tungus shaman into the Underworld; the second, the ascent of the Altai Turk shaman into the world above; and the third, a healing ceremony performed by an Ainu shaman of Japan. Other uses of the drum from other cultures will also be mentioned.
The Descent of the Tungus Shaman into the Underworld
A historical account by Shirokogoroff (1935) describes the traditional preparation for the Tungus shaman’s descent into the world of the dead. This consisted of setting up the following pieces of paraphernalia: (1) an idol; (2) a pair of wooden staffs representing two legs of a reindeer the shaman will ride when traveling over land; (3) a raft, consisting of four planks, which the shaman will use to cross the “sea” (Lake Baikal); and (4) two purifying implements, each made of four or eight narrow pieces of wood set up to form a gate through which the participants pass at one point in the ritual.
The first part began with the shaman drumming and concluded with an act of divination using the drumstick; the shaman throws it into the air, and if it falls down with the back side up, the indication is positive; but if it lands with the bowl or concave side up, the indication is negative. After the divination a reindeer is sacrificed.
Shirokogoroff observed that at the beginning of the second part of the ritual the shaman himself drummed; he rose up, then handing the drum to his assistant, took up the two staffs representing the reindeer’s legs and started singing and dancing, from time to time taking short leaps. During the course of his song the
participants joined in by repeating the last words the shaman had uttered or a set refrain. The tempo and volume increased; the shaman took a large cup of vodka, smoked several pipes of tobacco, and, singing and jumping with even greater excitement, he entered a state of ecstasy and dropped down onto the raft motionless. The drumming slowed down, and the singing stopped. In time the shaman came out of his trance and began to reply in a weak voice to questions put to him by the participants.
The ceremony ended with purification (the participants passing through the wooden gate) after which the shaman sang for a long time, then jumped onto the skin of the slaughtered reindeer. The drumming became faster and the singing louder while the shaman remained there motionless. Finally the drumming and singing subsided, and the people began to call the shaman back. (Shirokogoroff 1935).
What is notable about this ritual is that the shaman himself used the drum only at the beginning; the rest of the time the drumming was performed by the assistant. Obviously the shaman could not continue drumming while in a state of trance, whether genuine or simulated, and so entrusted the assistant with the task of maintaining the rhythm. It is doubtful that the vodka and tobacco consumed by the Tungus shaman during the first part of the ritual was powerful enough to induce a state of trance. Among the ancient Indo-Iranians a substance, called in Sanskrit soma and in Avestan haoma, was prepared and offered by the priests in a special ceremony. This was obtained from a plant, identified as a variety of ephedra that, when crushed, yielded a powerful substance that was mixed with water or milk to make a drink with hallucinatory properties.
Although Henrik S. Nyberg’s interpretation of ancient Iranian religious practices and those in Zoroastrianism as decidedly shamanic in nature (1938) was attacked by most scholars of Iranian studies, Mircea Eliade (1989) agreed that the ancient Iranians were familiar with many elements of shamanism, including ecstasy induced by intoxication, which he attributes to the use of hemp (Cannabis sativa), or bangha, an Iranian word that was disseminated among the Ugrians to refer to the mushroom (Agaricus muscarius) consumed by the shaman. The use of ephedra may have been yet another, perhaps earlier, borrowing from the nomadic Iranians,
at least among the more southerly peoples of Inner Asia, for Ephedra monostachya is native both to the steppes and to Mongolia and Siberia.
The Ostyak shaman of the Irtysh region consumed narcotic mushrooms on the first day of a ritual and while in a state of intoxication communicates what the spirits have revealed to him, but he subsequently falls into a deep sleep and does not continue until the next day (Kar-jalainen 1921-1927).
Rene de Nebesky-Wojkowitz (1975) pointed out the close parallels between the Siberian shaman and the Tibetan Lamaist oracle-priest; the oracle-priest, unlike the Bon shaman of Tibet, does not himself make use of a drum, but during the divination ceremony the assembled monks sing an invocation to the accompaniment of a drum and a bone trumpet; the god invoked takes possession of the oraclepriest, or medium, and he enters into a state of what by all reports is a genuine trance. The tendency to enter such a state under the influence of the music and without the use of a stimulant or narcotic appears to have been the original situation.
Examples of the “refrains” sung by the participants during the Tungus shaman’s ritual descent into the Underworld may be observed in a manuscript of the Sibe Manchus entitled Saman jarin. This text is divided into two parts, and in each part there are two repeated phrases, each consisting of two or three words, which alternate at the end of each line of a couplet; the last word (or two) of each alternating phrase is the same and the remaining word is similar (Stary 1992), so that the constant repetition in conjunction with an increase in volume would have had a hypnotic effect.
As for using the drumstick for divination, this appears to have been an incidental intrusion into the original ceremony, but it is now customary during the shamanist rituals of certain areas as, for instance, among the Nganasan (Dolgikh 1978). Though seventeenth-century visitors to the Lapps reported that the shaman entered a state of genuine cataleptic trance (Ohlmarks 1939), the present-day Lappish shamanist ceremony is devoted entirely to divination. The head of the drum is painted all over with figures; the drum is held horizontally, a group of brass rings is placed on the drum
head, and, in response to an inquiry the shaman beats the drum so that the rings move around over the surface of the drum. The shaman answers according to where the rings come to rest (Sommarstrom 1989).
The Ascent of the Altai Turk Shaman
In an account of the ritual of ascent into the Upper World from a nineteenth-century source, the Altai Turk shaman, unlike the Tungus shaman in the ritual of descent, retained possession of the drum the whole time, even though, due to required actions at certain junctures, the drumming had to stop. The Altai Turk shaman did have an assistant, called the head-holder, who helped him even before the ritual began by holding the head of the horse that had been chosen for sacrifice during the ceremony, as the shaman waved a birch rod over it and forced its spirit to leave its body. The spirit of the head-holder left his body at the same time and made its way immediately toward the Upper World (whereas the spirit of the horse continued to hover somewhere in the vicinity), and the head-holder did not reappear physically until the very end.
The shaman began the first part of the ritual by sitting in front of the fire, where he conjured the spirits by calling to them one by one through the drum; as they answered, the shaman then used the drum to catch the spirit, waved the drum, and tilted it toward the assembled participants to show that the spirit thus invoked had indeed been trapped. He continued to do this until he had enough spirits to help him. Next he went out after the spirit of the horse and caught it in the drum, and several people attending the event helped him slaughter the horse.
The second part of the ritual took place the following evening. It started with the offering of horse meat to the Masters of the Drum. The shaman then fumigated his drum and once again invoked a multitude of spirits to assist him; his drum grew heavy with them. The shaman then commenced drumming and with his drum purified all the participants; by the end of the long and complex procedure he was ostensibly in a state of ecstasy.
In the middle of the yurt there was a young birch (representing the Cosmic Tree), stripped of all its bark, with nine notches for steps
carved in its trunk. In his altered state the shaman climbed this tree, passing through heaven after heaven until he had reached the ninth heaven, sometimes even the twelfth, all the time recounting to the people below what he saw. On the way the shaman encountered the spirit of the head-holder and encouraged him to continue up into the next heaven. The account did not mention what had happened to the flock of spirits that the shaman gathered in his drum to help him, nor whether the shaman was still carrying the spirit of the sacrificial horse in the drum, but he must have had it with him, for when he reached the uppermost heaven he was able to offer it to Bai Ul-gen, the king of heaven, in the event the sacrifice had been accepted. Upon his return to earth, the shaman appeared to awaken from a deep sleep, addressed the participants, and the head-holder stepped forward to take the drum and drumstick from him (Radlov 1885).
It was noted by Shirokogoroff (1935) that the Tungus also had a ritual of ascent into the Upper World, though it was much less frequent than that of the descent into the Underworld; this ritual was performed for healing purposes, but only if the person involved was a sick child. In this case, as in that of the Altai Turk ritual, an animal was sacrificed, though it was either a sheep or young deer, and it is clearer in these accounts that the purpose of the shaman’s ascent is to take the spirit of the animal to the Upper World. Unlike the instance of the Altai Turk shaman, however, the Tungus shaman in this ceremony also had an assistant who took over the drumming once the shaman was ready for his journey, the first part of which was mimed by dancing and jumping (Shirokogoroff 1935).
In a healing ceremony of the Yakut of Siberia, described in an account from the early twentieth century, the shaman also escorted the spirit of a sacrificed animal to the Upper World; this happened only after he had captured the illness from the patient’s body. Presumably he accomplished both of these tasks using his drum as a medium (whereas in healing rituals of certain other peoples the shaman sucks the illness out, but he may then spit it into his drum), for, though the ritual started in complete silence, by the time the shaman was ready to effect the cure, he was drumming, singing, and dancing, and continued drum-
Manchu shaman with drum. (Adapted from Alessandra Pozzi, 1992, Manchu-shamanica illustrata [Wiesbaden, O Harrassowitz])
ming throughout, the last part of his dance imitating the flight of a bird (Sieroszewski 1902).
Unfortunately there is no detailed information about the Bon shaman and his rituals at the time Buddhism first began to spread throughout Tibet; he is credited, though, with the power to perform various feats of magic and sleight-of-hand, such as making a deer walk floating above the earth, but his best-known feat is the flight through the air on his drum (Stein 1981), a shamanic accomplishment implicit in any instance of celestial travel.
The idea of the shaman’s drum as mount is common to most societies where shamanism is practiced. The drumhead is made from the skin of a reindeer, roebuck, elk, deer, antelope, or horse, and the shaman rides whatever animal whose skin was used for his drum; in cultures where the drumhead is decorated this mount is one of the figures on the drumhead. At points in the ritual where the drum has been passed over to the assistant, the shaman may have to substitute some other prop for the drum, such as the two staffs representing a reindeer’s legs in the Tungus ritual outlined above. And though the shaman rides through the sky on his drum,
this does not mean that he conceives of the drum at that moment as a bird; it means rather that his mount is not earthbound.
On the other hand, where a journey to the Underworld through water is involved, the drum may be designated as something more appropriate to the task; according to an early twentieth century account, the Chukchee of northeastern Siberia, for example, referred to the shaman’s drum as a canoe (Bogoras 1904— 1909), and the Yukagir of Siberia called the shaman’s drum yalgil, which also means “sea” or “lake” (a related word yalgide, “to ring [a bell],” may reveal that the resemblance between the words for drum and sea is coincidental, or it may simply recall the fact that there are small jingles hung inside the drum), and the shaman on his journey says he “travels through his drum as through a lake” (Jochelson 1924— 1926). The reason for this association is that the shaman’s descent into the Underworld in maritime societies was in fact an underwater venture. This did not inevitably have the same result, however, in all maritime societies, for neither Yupik cauyaq “drum” nor Inuit qilaun (from a root qela, “to invoke spirits, shamanize”) has any connection with water.
The shaman’s assistant is an individual who has exhibited some potential for becoming a shaman (through calling by a spirit or spontaneous states of ecstasy), and has set out to be the disciple of an established shaman. In many, perhaps even most cases, the candidate is not permitted by the master even to touch the drum until he reaches a certain stage in his initiation, so that he must be satisfied with some substitute such as a drumstick without the drum. The differences between the role of assistant in the descent to the Underworld ritual and the Altai Turk ritual as they were reported may be simply that the Altai Turk shaman’s assistant was a novice, whereas the Tungus shaman’s assistant had reached a more advanced level.
Normally we would expect a fully qualified initiate either to take over his master’s duties entirely or move on to a new territory, but there do exist examples where shamans of the same rank perform side by side. In Korea the ceremony of exorcism is as a rule performed by the phansu (a male shaman either blind at birth or blinded voluntarily), rather than by the mu-dang, the female shaman. Typically the phansu
performs this ceremony in threes, one of them intoning the text while the second plays a drum and the third a brass bell (Lee 1981). In the east Canadian Inuit autumn ritual pertaining to the tradition of Sedna, supreme Being and mistress of the Underworld, the most powerful shaman, or angatkuq (compare Mongolian ongun, pl. ongut, the spirit of a shaman inhabiting some material object, generally an idol made of hide and/or felt, which is hung in the yurt) leads the action, but he is assisted by three other shamans (Boas 1964).
The Inuit ceremonies Franz Boas described, which were held in the summer, took place out of doors, but those held in the winter were performed in a structure called a gaggi, “singing house,” specially erected for the purpose (1964). In Yupik this is qasgiq or qaygiq, “men’s community house; steambath house”; this house was also regularly used for dances and feasts.
The first part of the Sedna festival as described by Boas was a ritual conducted in “a large hut” and the masked pantomime that is part of the same festival may be identified with one that among the Yupik of Alaska occurred in late October.
Boas did not mention the use of the drum by the shaman in other rituals he reported, but the opening of the ceremony held in the singing house as the Sedna festival began was signaled by the appearance of the shaman, who took up his drum and danced and sang to the rhythm of the drum. It is not specifically stated that the drummer was a shaman, but Boas did say that subsequently shamans were heard singing and praying in house after house, conjuring familiar spirits to help fight off the evil spirits aroused by the onset of winter and now active. Certainly these shamans were involved throughout this feast, culminating in the appearance of two “gigantic figures” wearing masks; Boas did not indicate that these figures were shamans either, but one of the sources he quotes did (Kumlien 1879; Boas 1964).
Healing Ceremony by an Ainu Shaman
In his account of shamanism among the Sakhalin Ainu of Japan, Bronislav Pilsudski (1909, 72—78) described two rituals, the first for divination, the second for healing a sick child. In the first ritual the shaman, or
tusukuru (from tusu, “to prophesy,” and kuru, “person”) was bound hand and foot facing the participants, and his drum was hung up some distance from him. Then all the lights were turned out “to encourage the approach of the spirits.” Presently the sound of the drum was heard, a signal that the spirit had arrived. This spirit had a rod and approached the row of participants; whomever he touched with the rod might ask a question. A positive answer was indicated by hitting the inquirer on the foot or the ground in front of his foot in a vertical direction; hitting in a horizontal direction indicated a negative answer.
The healing ceremony opened with the shaman warming his drum over the fire, but even before he started drumming, strange halfhissing, half-piping sounds emanated from his breast. He then beat the drum, first light and fast, then slower and louder. At this point he uttered a long series of inhuman sounds, including the baying of a dog, barking of a fox, howling of a wolf, growling of a bear, sounds of ducks and other birds, and creaking of trees in a storm.
The helping spirits arrived and circled the fire; the shaman screamed at the approach of the evil spirits, and he took a whisk (takusa, made from the stems of mugwort and wild strawberry) and chased after them. He prayed to the helping spirits to cure the sick child, and every strophe of the prayer was followed by an interval of solo drumming, the sound of which altered from time to time.
Often the shaman held the drum in front of his face, and the sound he made reverberated like an echo. He appeared now to be in a state of trance and ran here and there throughout the hut, his cries growing stronger. The climax came when the spirits spoke through him concerning the condition of the sick child; the participants heard strangled words, which the shaman repeated, instructions for what had to be done to cure the child. At the conclusion of the ritual he swung the whisk around his head to clear out the helping spirits, who were no longer needed, and fastened the whisk to the underside of his drum in preparation for the next ritual.
During the Yukagir healing ceremony the shaman also uttered a series of animal noises, in a manner similar to that of the Sakhalin Ainu shaman, including the sounds of a hare,
cuckoo, stork, owl, diver, wolf, bear, and dog, all of which were his helping spirits.
The Ainu divination ritual as reported appears to be independent of the healing ritual, but it may also have served as a prelude to the healing ceremony, as in the case of the Barguzin Tungus healing ceremony (Shirokogoroff 1935). The binding of the Ainu shaman recalls that of the Inuit shaman in the ritual ascent to the Upper World, when his hands were fastened behind his back and his neck was tied to his knees; the veil of secrecy provided by extinguishing the lamps in the Ainu ritual is paralleled by the use of a curtain to hide the Inuit shaman from the spectators in both the ritual just mentioned and in the ritual of descent into the Underworld (Rasmussen 1929).
John Batchelor, in his 1902 study of the Ainu of Hokkaido, reported that the shaman lost consciousness and was possessed by the spirits so that he became capable of divination or prophecy; when this happened he appeared to be in a state of trance, a condition marked by tremors, heavy breathing, perspiring, and sightless though open eyes. All these symptoms were apparently self-induced without the stimulus of drumming.
The principal function of the shaman, or an-gakuq, among the eastern Canadian Inuit was to find out the reason of sickness and death or of any other misfortune visiting the natives, which he did by consulting his tornaq (Inuit tarniq, Yupik tarneq, “soul,” “spirit”)—a familiar most commonly in the form of a great bear—in the case of illness presumably to cure the patient. Boas (1964) made brief reference to the flight of the shaman with his tornaq to propitiate a hostile tornaq and to visit Sedna, mistress of the Underworld (or rather one of three underworlds), the abode of the dead, though he made no mention of escorting the spirits of the dead there. According to several sources that he quoted, however, it would seem that another function of the Eskimo angakuq in general was to visit Sedna, who was, in addition to her chthonic role (mistress of sea animals) to persuade her to release some of them in times when game was scarce. This appears to belong to a hunting magic tradition that may predate the other functions of the shaman.
In most reports on the customs and beliefs of the Eskimos dating from the early 1900s
(among which were those of Rasmussen), no mention was made of the use of a drum by the shaman, which led Eliade to conclude that “the Eskimo shaman lacks . . . the drum” (1989, 289) According to certain earlier accounts, however, dating from the 1800s, the Eskimo shaman did make use of a drum during the rituals (Mousalimas 1989). This instance and that of the differences between the practices of the Ainu shaman in Sakhalin and those in Hokkaido suggest a gradual loss of tradition.
Conclusion: Drumming and Trance
The question arises, then, whether it is possible for the shaman to enter a state of trance without the aid of drumming. Instances reviewed where genuine trance was attested all involved music: drumming, drumming and singing or, in the absence of a drum, at least rhythmic choral singing. In a work devoted specifically to the relationship between music and trance, Gilbert Rouget (1985) reviewed the theory that drumming has a neurological effect that may induce a state of trance and concluded that though the reaction is by no means spontaneous or inevitable, it could occur if the subject expected such a stimulus to trigger this response. In cases where the shaman found this stimulus did not have the expected result he might have recourse to some narcotic or intoxicant to bring on the trance; but this would happen only if a state of trance was the sole credible way to achieve the objective of the ritual as, for instance, when the shaman is required to cross into the Underworld.
Otherwise the shaman might either feign a state of trance or eliminate that particular ritual from his repertoire.
Roger Finch
See also: Ainu Shamanism; Drums, Shamanic: Form and Structure; Evenki Shamanism; Horses; Korean Shamanism; Sakha Shamanism; Siberian Shamanism; Tibetan Shamanism; Trance Dance; Trance, Shamanic; Yupik Shamanism
References and further reading:
Batchelor, John. 1902. The Ainu of Japan. New York and Chicago: Fleming H. Revell.
Boas, Franz. 1964. The Central Eskimo. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Bogoras, Waldemar. 1904—1909. The Chukckee.
In Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Memoir of the American Museum of Naturay History, vol. 7. Leiden and New York: Brill and Stechert.
Dolgikh, B. O. 1978. “Nganasan, Shaman Drums and Costumes.” Pp. 341—351 in Shamanism in Siberia. Edited by V Dioszegi and M. Hoppal. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.
Eliade, Mercea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Jochelson, Waldemar. 1924—1926. The Yukaghir and the Yukaghirized Tungus. London and New York: American Museum of Natural
History, Memoirs.
Karjalainen, K. T. 1921—1927. Die Religion der Jugra Volker. Helsinki: Folklore Fellows Communications, Vols. 8, 11, 20.
Kumlien, Ludwig. 1879. Contributions to the Natural History of Arctic America. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Lee, Jung Young. 1981. Korean Shamanistic Rituals. The Hague: Mouton.
Mousalimas, S. A. 1989. “Shamans-of-Old in Southern Alaska.” In Shamanism Past and Present. Edited by Hoppal and Sadovsky.
Budapest: Ethnographic Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Rene de. 1975. Oracles and Demons of Tibet: The Cult and Iconography of the Tibetan Protective Deities. Graz, Austria: Akademische D??ck U.
Verlagsanstalt.
Nyberg, Henrik Samuel. 1938. Die Religionen des alten Iran. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs.
Ohlmarks, Ake. 1939. Studien zumproblem des schamanismus. Lund: C. W. K.
Pilsudski, Bronislav. 1909. “Der Schamanismus bei den Ainu-Stammen von Sachalin.” Globus 95: 72-78.
Radlov, Vasilii Vasilevich. 1885. Das Schamanenthun und sein Kultur. Leipzig: T. O. Weigel.
Rasmussen, Kuud. 1929. “Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.” In Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition. Vol. 1. Translated by W. Worster. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
Rouget, Gilbert. 1985. Music and Trance. Chicago and New York: University of Chicago Press.
Shirokogoroff, S. M. 1935. Psychomental Comples of the Tungus. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co.
Sieroszewski, Wenceslas. 1902. “Du chamanisme d’apres les croyances des Yakoutes.” Revue de l’Histoire des Religions 46: 204-233; 299-338.
Sommarstrom, Bo. 1989. “The Sami Shaman’s Drum and the Holographic Paradigm Discussion.” Pp. 125-137 in Mihaly Hoppal and Otto von Sadovsky, Shamanism: Past and Present, Part 2. Budapest: Ethnographic Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Stary, Giovanni. 1992. Das “Schamanenbuch” der Sibe-Mandschuren. Wiesbaden: Kommissions Verlag O. Harassouitz.
Stein, Rolf A. 1981. La civilization tibetain. Paris: Le Sycomore.
DRUMS, SHAMANIC:
FORM AND STRUCTURE
Introduction: Historical Origin of the Frame Drum
The frame drum historically has been found in widely separated areas of the world. Sumerian statuettes portraying women playing frame drums date from about 2000 b.c.e., and Egyptian frame drums that have survived date from 700 b.c.e. The Egyptian frame drums were of two types: round and square. The round one was called sar, and the square one was called tab. Some of these frame drums, like some shaman’s drums, were very large. A round frame drum from a relief of the Twenty-Second Dynasty (950-730 b.c.e.) measures over a meter in diameter (Farmer 1997). Varieties of frame drums may also be seen on large stone slabs in Hittite temples or friezes. For example, frieze no. 1 in the Ethnological Museum, Ankara, shows a pair of kudum, a kind of frame drum, and frieze no. 10 shows a frame drum with jingles inside at the top (tambourine). In the orthostat frieze from the palace of King Barrekup (late Hittite, eighth century b.c.e.), now in the Archaeological Museum, Istanbul, there are two musicians playing frame drums.
The first representations of frame drums in India occur in the sculptures of Bharhut
(second century B.C.E.), Sanchi (first-second centuries b.c.e.) (Deva 1978), and Amaravati (first century b.c.e.-second century c.e.) (Hariharan and Kuppuswamy 1985). The Vedas, the most ancient and revered scriptures in India, held by most Western scholars to date from towards the beginning of the first millennium b.c.e., mention several drums. Beside the bhumi dundubhi (“pit drum” or “pot drum”) and dundubhi (a bowl-shaped drum, or kettledrum) occur the names dambara and lambara. These drums are unknown, and there is no description of them in the text (Deva 1978), but from the names it is possible to connect these drums with the Sumerian dapa, Egyptian tab, and, in the Semitic languages, Akkadian atapu, Hebrew tof, and Arabic daff, most of which have been identified as frame drums.
The single-headed frame drum had its origin in Siberia and was probably from the first a shaman’s ritual object or instrument. Its size would have been determined by the materials from which it was constructed, the earliest form consisting simply of the skin of a deer or elk or a similar animal stretched over a frame of green sapling bent into a hoop. Primitive drums of this type are still extant among certain Indian tribes of western North America.
Unfortunately there are no surviving examples of such frame drums in Siberia dating from an early period. Although petroglyphs discovered in Mongolia depict a number of cultural items such as weaponry and carts, there are no representations of drums or other musical instruments or even figures that may be identified as shamans, as in the case of the famed Paleolithic wall painting of a shaman found at Lascaux in France.
Early Sumerian Frame Drums
The earliest representations we have of the frame drum, then, are those from Sumer. The Sumerians may have brought the frame drum out of central Asia with them. It was at one time thought that they were the original inhabitants of lower Mesopotamia, but research in the study of proper names shows that many place names in Sumer are not Sumerian words but belong to an earlier people (called Proto-Euphrateans) of unknown origin and linguistic affiliation. It is now believed that the Sumerians migrated into Mesopotamia in the second half of the fourth
millennium b.c.e. from somewhere in the region of the Caspian Sea, possibly from a citystate named Aratta. Hence, it is thought that the Sumerians belong to that broad cultural continuum that extended from the Caucasus area eastward through Central Asia into Siberia.
As early as the third millennium b.c.e., Egypt and Ethiopia, known as Magan and Meluhha respectively, were mentioned in Sumerian texts. By the time of Sargon the Great, the founder of the powerful dynasty of Akkad, the influence of Sumer was felt from India to Egypt, and Sargon may even have sent his armies into Egypt, Ethiopia, and India. So far, Semitic equivalents for the Egyptian name for one kind of frame drum, tab, have been attested to only in Akkadian, Hebrew, and Arabic, and the Akkadian appears to be a borrowing from Sumerian. If a common Semitic or Afro-Asiatic root cannot be recovered, then it is likely that the frame drum, along with the Sumerian name for it, came into Egypt as one of the culture items borrowed from Sumer.
It is not clear from the Sumerian representations of the frame drum whether it had any function other than that of a rhythm instrument. It is not possible to say if it was by origin a shaman’s drum because no evidence exists of shamanic elements in the Sumerian religion. However, there is a legend that King Etano of Kish, the first ruler of Sumer whose deeds are recorded, ascended into heaven with the aid of an eagle to obtain the “gland of birth,” a legend that has a strong shamanistic air. Magical practices as outlined in Sumerian texts have been compared to the healing and exorcist rituals of the Altaic and Uralic shaman (Lenormant 1877). The descent of Lemminkainen into Death’s Domain (Lonnnot 1967), obviously the account of the familiar shamanist journey into the Underworld, has its parallel in the Sumerian accounts of the descent of the goddess Inanna into the Underworld realm ruled by her sister Ereshkigal and in the Gilgamesh Epic account of the descent of Enkidu to retrieve the pukku (drum) and mikku (drumstick) fashioned by Inanna from the wood of the huluppu tree (perhaps a willow) she planted, which had fallen into that same death’s domain (Kramer 1963).
In any case, if the Sumerians brought a shaman’s drum with them, they brought a form with jingles on it, for it is in this same general
area that the tambourine spread, in the hands of dancers, westward into Europe and through North Africa and eastward into India.
Early Frame Drums in the Americas
From south India the frame drum was carried to the east coast of southern Africa. The frame drum spread at a very early date from Siberia and then in successive waves into North America; it can be noted that innovations that arose in Siberia later are found on the other side of the Bering Strait closer and closer to Siberia in order of appearance, with the earliest ones being found closest to Siberia.
South America presents a special case, for the sound-producing adjuncts appear to have preceded the drum itself or to have completely superseded it; the typical rhythm instrument which was as a rule used by the shaman was the gourd rattle. At a later period, when the frame drum made an appearance in South America, transmitted there probably by a more direct sea route, a second face was added to the frame drum in Peru so that the drum could contain pebbles or other sound-producing material, thus turning the drum into a kind of rattle. In Chile, a native kettledrum was so modified in form that it came to resemble the broad but shallow drum of Siberia that was its model.
Functions of the Shaman’s Drum
The shaman’s drum is still used currently; it has many functions. It serves as the shamans’ “mount,” on which they ride to the Upper World or the realm of spirits, the hole through which they descend into the Netherworld, or a net in which they catch spirits. The principal function of the drum is through the repeated sound of its rhythm to produce in the shamans a heightened state of consciousness, or a state of ecstasy (Rouget 1985). As a rule, the shamans themselves play the drum and use it to measure the pace of their singing or dancing. But there are also cultures in which the shaman’s disciples or assistants may either accompany the shaman on other instruments or may take over the drumming on another drum if the shaman stops playing. This generally happens when the shaman falls into a trance or a trancelike state.
The instruments used by the assistants vary from culture to culture. It hardly matters what
Yenisei Ostyak shaman's drum, back side. (Adapted from Georg Nioradze, 1925, Der Schamanismus bei den sibirischen Volkern [Stuttgart: Strecker & Schroder])
these instruments are, for they have no significance for the shamanic ritual other than their sound-producing capacity. But we find in some cases that the shamans themselves do not use a drum but some other instrument, such as the qopuz, a stringed instrument of the lute type. What has undoubtedly happened in such cases is that the shamans have taken over an instrument originally used by their assistants. Possibly the drums fell into disuse because the role of music maker was taken over by the assistants, and then the shamans came to use the secondary instruments themselves whenever the assistants were not present or when they had no assistant. This would happen where shamanism suffered a decline.
In cases where the substitute instrument is not a drum, it is easy to recognize that the instrument is a substitute for the shaman’s drum, but when it is another type of drum, not a frame drum, the substitute drum may come to be regarded as a variety of, or development of, an earlier shaman’s drum, even in cases where it is not.
Korean Shamanism
Particular problems exist with respect to the shaman’s drum in Korean shamanism because in
Chukchee shaman's drum. (Adapted from Georg Nioradze, 1925, Der Schamanismus bei den sibirischen Volkern [Stuttgart: Strecker & Schroder])
Korea the female shaman, the mudang, far outnumbers and occupies a far more important place in the practice of shamanism at the present time than the paksu, or male shaman. Drumming has been relegated to the kitae, a musical specialist female shaman who assists the mudang, thus leaving her freedom in her dance. The changgu, the principal drum, is a large hour-glass shaped drum; the ends are sixty to ninety centimeters in diameter and are covered with hide (Huhn 1980, 26; Lee 1981, 88). Among the traditional Chinese drums, there are drums of this size, but they are barrel drums, not hourglass drums; there are hourglass drums among the traditional Japanese drums, but they are all small drums. The Korean changgu is a stationary drum, unlike the usual shaman’s drum, and the kitae sits to play it. Its origin is the damaru of India, Tibet, and ancient Chinese
Turkestan. The Korean changgu is thus not derived from the familiar shaman’s drum of Siberia but is a substitute for it.
During the ceremony to honor the dead ancestors, the female shaman shakes a set of jingles called ulsae. This instrument consists of a metal grip with several metal mirrors, each about ten to thirtheen centimeters in diameter, suspended from each end. Jingles are a frequent adjunct to the shaman’s drum in Siberia, but they are used apart from the drum. A small double-headed drum, called puk, consisting of a wooden frame with cow skin stretched over it, is used primarily by the male shaman while chanting. A round or oval wicker basket, tongkoli, is sounded when the female shaman calls out the spirits of the dead (Lee 1981, 32, 88, 91, 104). Either of these may be derived from the original shaman’s drum in Korea. Finally, there is a small round drum with handle, called soku (small drum) or suku (hand drum), similar to the Japanese uchiwa-daiko, with a drumhead made of cowhide or sheepskin, used in instrumental groups and by dancers; it is not mentioned in the sources whether or not this drum is also a shaman’s drum.
According to Mircea Eliade, the Lamaist drum of Tibet influenced the shape not only of the Siberian shaman’s drum but also that of the Eskimo and Chukchee shaman’s drums. The latter, however, are single-headed drums with a handle, and they resemble the phyed rnga, “half drum,” of the “black Bon” shaman of Tibet, rather than the double-headed drum of the Buddhist lama. Furthermore, such drums have been attested to in use in the Arctic and North America, in Java, Yugoslavia, and India, and hence are not so limited in distribution that they may be traced to a single source.
There is a great difference between a singleheaded drum such as the Siberian shaman’s drum, which may be held easily in one hand by a dancer, even without a grip in back, and one with a handle, whether single-headed or double-headed, which may be held just as easily. The Tibetan religious dances, like the dance of the Korean female shaman, are performed to the accompaniment of an orchestra consisting of various instruments. There is a formal division of function between a dancer or group of dancers and a musician or group of musicians; thus it is less likely that the Lamaist drum represents an original shaman’s drum or is derived
from it than that it originates from some independent source.
In conclusion, the frame drum has an ancient origin and is found worldwide. The single-headed frame drum originated in Siberia and was most likely associated with shamanic activity. However, the earliest representations of frame drums are from Sumer, where the association with shamanism is unclear, with the exception of some legends. The spread of the Siberian single-headed frame drum can be shown by its diffusion into North and possibly South America.
The shaman’s drum functions principally to help the shaman achieve an altered state of consciousness where he can have contact with spirits. Often other instruments may be used in a shamanic ceremony, usually by the shaman’s assistant. Changes have been noted in the use of the drum by the shaman, either due to a different origin or a different cultural construction placed upon it, as is the case in Korea. However, in general, the single-headed frame drum, with variations, has been associated worldwide with the practice of shamanism.
Roger Finch
See also: Animal Symbolism (Asia); Chepang Shamanism; Deer Imagery and Shamanism; Drumming in Shamanistic Rituals; Evenki Shamanism; Finno-Ugric Shamanism;
Khakass Shamanism; Korean Shamanism;
Tibetan Shamanism
References and further reading:
Boulton, Laura. 1975. Musical Instruments of World Cultures. Tempe: Arizona State University.
Buchner, Alexander. 1972. Folk Music Instruments. New York: Crown.
Covell, Alan Carter. 1986. Folk Art and Magic: Shamanism in Korea. Seoul, Korea: Hollym Corp.
Densmore, Frances. 1927. Handbook of the Collection of Musical Instruments. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Deva, Bigamudre Chaitanya. 1978. Musical Instruments of India. Calcutta: Firma KLM.
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Emmons, George Thornton. 1991. The Tlingit Indians. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Farmer, Henry George. 1997. Studies in Oriental Music. Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University.
Hariharan, Muthuswamy, and Gowri Kuppuswamy. 1985. Music in Indian Art Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan.
Howard, Joseph H. 1967. Drums in the Americas. New York: Oak Publications.
Hsu, Dolores M. 1984. The Henry Eichheim Collection of Oriental Instruments. Santa Barbara: University Art Museum, University of California.
Huhn, Halla Pai. 1980. Kut: Korean Shamanist Rituals. Elizabeth, NJ: Hollym International.
Izikowitz, Karl Gustav. 1935. Musical and Other Sound Instruments. Goteborg: Elanders Boktruckerei.
Kim, Jeong-Hak. 1978. The Prehistory of Korea. Honolulu: Honolulu University Press.
Kramer, Samuel Noah. 1963. The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lee, Jung Young. 1981. Korean Shamanist Rituals. The Hague/New York: Mouton.
Lenormant, Francois. Magie chez les Chaldeens et les origines accadiennes. English translation, 1877. London: Samuel Bagster.
Lonnrot, Elias. 1967. Kalevala: Dasfinnische Epos des Elias Lonnnot. Munchen: Hauser.
Rouget, Gilbert. 1985. Music and Trance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku and Ongaku Gakubu.
1987. Catalog of the Musical Instrument collection of the Koizumi Fumio Memorial Archives. Tokyo: Geijutsu Kenkyu Shinko Zaidan.
ECOLOGY AND SHAMANISM
Throughout the varied forms of shamanism in diverse cultures worldwide, both male and female shamans cultivate intense, intimate, and transforming relationships with local lands, animals, and life forms, and it is these relationships that are referred to when ecology and shamanism are discussed. We need to note that shamanism is not a distinctive religion that unites strikingly different shaman-healers across cultures, but rather that the term shamanism suggests shared patterns of expression evident in the relationships of these ecstatic practitioners with self, society, and environment. These shared expressions can be seen as simply resulting, at least in some cases, from the intimacy of interaction of small-scale societies with their environments. Similarly, a basic impulse, which might be called an ecological imagination in the human family, may cause individuals to relate to local environments in innovative and creative ways.
The forces associated with a shaman’s turning into an animal, linking community identity to sacred sites, and calling together the spiritual beings that dwell in the surrounding territory mark activities strongly related to ecology. Whereas aspects of a shaman’s traditional environmental knowledge such as plant, animal, and weather knowledge correspond to the empirical knowledge of scientific ecology, these activities more clearly manifest culturally constructed religious ecologies. Religious ecologies involve seeing the environment as animistic, interdependent, and formative of personal and community identities. Found within many small-scale, indigenous communities, the healing and divining arts of shamans present a range of unique individual expressions of culturally specific religious ecologies, the understanding of which demands a reexamination of animism.
As Nurit Bird-David suggested (1999), the concept of animism needs to be revisited for what it has to tell of the strikingly relational character of environmental knowledge evident in shamanism. Knowing spirit presences in the local environment, for example, is not simply a subjective experience that draws shamans away, or alienates them, from their community. Rather, power presences within the environment are understood as persons with whom one establishes relationships entailing privileges and obligations similar to personhood within the human community. As spirit persons, these presences take form in imaginative performances, express desires, undertake willful actions, and are capable of communication. Shamanic rituals are distinctive occasions in which communities talk with the more-than-human persons in the cosmos. Moreover, a shaman’s ecstatic performance brings to life his or her knowledge of the world in which a logic of interactive need and relatedness draws together these communities of beings. A shaman’s rituals often interrelate the powerful persons of the bush with the village community in order to transform situations of need such as illness, loss, and anxiety.
Shamans also function within the social and psychological boundaries of their societies. This is evident, for example, in their use of kinship terms to describe their relationships with spirits in all the cosmological realms. They develop symbolic expressions of their visionary encounters within the context of culturally constructed cosmologies, cosmologies that interrelate local bioregions with the shamans’ inner psychological experiences of spirit persons. This mutually reflexive and creative flow between shamans, their communities, and the powerful persons of the cosmos, then, activates an animistic epistemology, a relational knowing as if between dis
tinct persons, and a religious ecology that stresses the interrelationship of community, local environment, and the larger cosmos.
This investigation of shamanism and ecology focuses on the ways in which shamans function in terms of three aspects of life: the external environment, for example, of mountains, rivers, and biodiversity; an inner experiential landscape that resonates with the animate world surrounding the human community; and a realized, or functional, cosmology that weaves together the outer environment of other-than-hu-man persons and the shaman’s inner psychic world. As will be evident in the examples below, the external environment, the inner psychic world of the shaman, and the generative significance of a people’s cosmology cannot be neatly separated out from one another for analysis. Rather, they mutually inform and implicate one another in the holistic lifeways of shamanic cultures, even though they can be identified as distinct dimensions of shamanism (Grim 2001, xxxiii-xxxix).
In his now classic study of the fishing and reindeer-herding Evenki peoples of the Central Siberian Plateau, Arkadii Anisimov (1963) described the shaman’s tent and ritual as a “fencing” of Evenki country, so as to protect it from the harmful spirit attacks of Underworld beings and of neighboring shamans. In effect, the ritual configures zones of symbolic activities that manifest the Evenki cosmology of a tripartite world. The shaman’s tent is in the middle region, the earth, environment of humans, with an eastern gallery as the celestial realm and a western gallery as the Underworld. The cosmological symbolism of the realms is evident to the Evenki. Thus, the eastern gallery has living green-leafed larch trees that are turned upside down with their roots on top as if anchored in the celestial world. Wooden plaques present spirit images of reindeer and pike symbolically swimming in the Milky Way as river, plaques that are planted in the ground as guardians of this celestial region. Dead larch trees in the western gallery have their roots pointing down to the netherworld with wooden images of spirit birds and ancestral figures that guard the path to the departed. This western gallery, moreover, has multiple wooden board images of eelpouts, elk, stags, salmon trout, and larch trees with birds on top, all arranged in the form of a fish weir to capture any dangerous wolf
spirits sent by neighboring shamans to attack the Evenki during the shaman’s ritual.
The shaman’s tent set on the human earth level has a central larch tree, a fire at its base, and a raft-seat for the shaman with wooden-plaque images of salmon flanked by attending representations of knives, spears, and fish other than pike. In this setting of the external earth environment, the shaman invokes personal forces associated with becoming an animal and undertakes therapeutic journeys to heal members of the community who are ill. Along with healing symbolism, the shaman marshals considerable military might in the form of spiritanimal legions to oppose dangerous intruders into the external environment of the Evenki.
The shaman may symbolically move through all three realms during his ritual performance while he sits on the raft drumming and invoking his spirits. As these animal spirits appear, the shaman ritually places them in the wooden images, thus empowering them to guard the land and the people. When his major animal spirit, or khargi, appears, the shaman increasingly identifies with this powerful and intimate spirit presence. Traveling to the celestial regions and the Underworld as his khargi, the shaman repeatedly returns to the local region with healing for the patient. In the same way, he returns with stories of his encounters with spirits and deities of the other regions. His stories and ritual performances evoke even more bird, mammal, and fish spirit-watchmen, who increasingly form a stockade, or fencing, that reaches through the air and across mountains and ridges on behalf of the people and land. These guardian spirits reside in rivers and local bodies of water to guard the people. As long as the shaman lives, these spirit forces stand guard over the land and the people. Should the shaman die, a cultural anxiety arises until a new shaman can reestablish this protective spiritual fencing. The animistic knowledge of the Evenki shaman, therefore, draws on a complex religious ecology that connects animal symbolism, military guardedness, and healing journeys so as to protect the people in their earth environment.
Understanding the ways in which shamans place spirit beings in the environment in conjunction with their personal inner, psychic visions and journeys has opened remarkable new insights into shamanism and ecology. Helpful
in this effort has been the work of Juha Pen-tikainen in describing the cognitive mapping of the cosmos within, as is accomplished by mature shamans. Typically this inner topography of mental states corresponds to the external environment. This correspondence is often made manifest in shamans’ rituals using layered symbolisms drawing associations between their initiating call experiences, local landforms, and body parts of assisting animals. The topographic sophistication and beauty of these inner mappings are often embodied in shamanic rituals. These ritual enactments of interior states are often the means for dialogue with the powerful beings of the land. One classic expression of this mapping of the inner landscape, with the external environment into a shaman’s ritual, can be found in the narratives of the Lakota wicasa wakan, or shaman, Nicholas Black Elk.
Black Elk’s great vision at the age of nine was told to John Neihardt in 1931, when Black Elk was sixty-eight. The clarity of his narration of the sequence of visionary events suggests the indelible nature of the vision. Black Elk’s acute mapping of his inner, visionary topography connects directly to the local geography of the Black Hills, which are sacred to the Lakota. In one section of his vision Black Elk described receiving a daybreak star herb. He recalled the two male spirits who came to him, saying:
“Behold the center of the earth for we are taking you there.” As I looked I could see great mountains with rocks and forests on them. I could see all colors of light flashing out of the mountains toward the four quarters. Then they took me on top of a high mountain where I could see all over the earth. Then they told me to take courage for they were taking me to the center of the earth....
Two men came and stood right in front of us and the west black spirit said: “Behold them, for you shall depend upon them.” Then as we stood there the daybreak star stood between the two men from the east....
They had an herb in their hands and they gave it to me saying: “Behold this; with this on earth you shall undertake anything and accomplish it.” As they presented the herb to me they told me to drop it on earth and when it hit the earth it took root and grew and flowered. You could see a ray of light coming
from the flower, reaching the heavens, and all the creatures of the universe saw this light. (DeMallie 1984, 134)
Black Elk eventually narrated his experiences to a shaman, Black Road, who assisted him in reenacting his vision for his people. As Black Elk further pondered his visionary experiences, he undertook a traditional Lakota vision quest, during which he received a vision from the Thunderers causing him to join with other heyoka, sacred clown, visionaries. Having expanded his spiritual knowledge, Black Elk was culturally and spiritually equipped to begin mapping his experience of being at the center of the world, and to understand the placement of the daybreak star herb in both his inner visionary world and the local Lakota lands.
Finding the daybreak star herb entailed more than Black Elk’s simply searching for the place where he had dropped the herb from his vision into the northern plains of the Missouri River. Rather, locating the herb meant aligning his own visionary experiences of personal centering with the Lakota spiritual world of wakan beings, or power persons. Cognitive awareness of his vision, its purpose, and the Great Plains location of the actual herb joined with a deeply affective, felt understanding of the interrelation of these components as a relational epistemology. Black Elk described it in these words:
One day I invited One Side to come over and eat with me. I told him I had seen an herb in my dream and we should go out and look for it.... That morning we got on our horses
and went out in search of this herb. We got on top of a big hill and saw a place and knew this was in the vicinity of the place that I had seen in my vision. We sat down and began to sing the song I had sung in the first vision: “In a sacred manner they are sending voices to you,” etc. When we finished singing this song, down toward the west I could see magpies, crows, chicken hawks and eagles swarming around a certain place. I looked over to One Side and said: “Friend, right there is the herb.” (DeMallie 1984, 235)
The affirmation by the creatures circling around the herb linked place, plant, and Black Elk’s vision experiences. The birds signaled both this cognitive awareness and deeply affec
tive knowledge by which Black Elk had mapped his vision onto the land. These modes of sensual and intellectual knowing enabled Black Elk to connect his inner visionary landscape with his Lakota people’s land as well as with the invisible and powerful wakan realm, so as to be able to respond to the human world of need. This mapping of the visionary daybreak star herb with the actual plant was the final preparation for Black Elk to begin his work as a healer and adviser to his people.
These examples manifest a realized, or functional, cosmology in which the story, or understanding transmitted in oral narratives of the all-pervasive powers of the cosmos, is woven both into the local environment and into the daily activities and material culture of the community. Shamans exemplify, but are not necessarily the sole religious figures associated with, the realization of cosmological power. The sophistication and skill with which shamans activate these therapeutic and inspirational relationships with more-than-human forces is amplified and expanded throughout the diverse ethnography on shamanism. A prominent characteristic in many cultural settings is the manner in which shamans become cosmic persons aligned with the powerful persons of their visions and dreams. In these roles shamans are believed capable of traveling in cosmic realms, of sustaining social order and environmental balance, and of penetrating into hidden personal, social and cosmic realms.
In her studies of the Wana people of Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, Jane Atkinson focused on the shamanic drumming ceremony called mabolong, at which the shaman calls an extraordinary crowd of spirit presences. Conversing with these powerful persons, the shaman speaks in esoteric and ordinary language styles that both conceal secrets of these presences and subtly reveal relationships that empower the shaman. Atkinson describes the profound interrelationship of person, environment, and cosmos according to Wana shamanship:
The person, like the cosmos, possesses hidden as well as accessible dimensions. What is more, the hidden aspects of the person interact with the hidden aspects of the world beyond the person. Shamans alone can mediate that interaction. Because the well-being of a person is dependent on the behavior of others,
both spirits and humans through their actions can intentionally or unintentionally disrupt one’s state of health. A person’s well-being rests on a fragile assemblage of hidden elements: when these elements are concentrated in their proper places, the person thrives; when they are dispersed, the person grows weak and sick. In this sense the person and the polity are homologous. Like a person, the Wana homeland prospered when “knowledge,” “power,” and “wealth” were concentrated at their source, but when these elements departed for the “end of the earth,” this prosperity declined. Only when these elements are reassembled at their origin will the homeland recover, like a patient whose soul parts have been restored. (Atkinson 1989, 119)
Thus, Wana shamans model a remarkable cosmological gaze in their sensitivity to the local environment. Their thaumaturgical display of cosmological power evokes the collective spirit elements from the “ends of the earth” in order to restore individual, community, and environmental harmony. This activation of cosmological forces is also evident in healing by Temiar spirit mediums of Central Malaysia.
In her work, Marina Roseman (1991) described the ways in which the soul of a flower, bird, animal, or mountain in the rainforest detaches from its outward form and appears to the roaming head-soul of a dreaming Temiar spirit medium. Gifting the human dreamer with a song, the spirit guide sets in motion the potential for the healer to identify illness agents that also come to individuals from the rainforest environment as detached, disorderly spiritual elements. It is the healer’s task to move the cosmos back into harmony by performing dream-songs that transmit the cool, spiritual liquid called kahyek, which combines the inner force of foliage, rivers, rain, and dew. For the Temiar, singing embodies this transformative process, clearly demonstrating how healers align themselves with culturally determined cosmological forces to respond to individual, community, and environmental needs.
Describing a similar act of alignment, within a totally different cultural setting, Johannes Wilbert (1993) wrote of the wishiratu, Warao shamans of the Orinoco River delta in Guiana. These shamans work with fire, tobacco, magnificently crafted rattles, and quartz crystals
maintaining the light, mehokohi, in the chests of the living by traveling the spiritual roads of Warao cosmology to negotiate with the powerful spirits. The Warao sense of a “participatory universe” provides the context in which their shamans weave their own inner revelatory experiences with the warp and weft of cultural lifeway and local environment.
John A. Grim
See also: Animal Symbolism (Asia); Celtic Shamanism; Central and South American Shamanism; Evenki Shamanism; Ghost Dance and Prophet Dance; Indonesian Shamanism; Lakota Shamanism
References and further reading:
Anisimov, Arkadii. 1963. “Cosmological
Concepts of the Peoples of the North.”
Pp. 85—92 in Studies in Siberian Shamanism.
Edited by Henry N. Michael. Toronto: Arctic Institute of North America.
Atkinson, Jane Monnig. 1989. The Art and Politics of Wana Shamanship. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Balzer, Marjorie Mandelstam, ed. 1990.
Shamanism: Soviet Studies of Traditional Religion in Siberia and Central Asia. Armonk, NY, and London: M. E. Sharpe.
Bird-David, Nurit. 1999. “’Animism’ Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology.” Current Anthropology 40, Supplement, February: S67—S91.
DeMallie, Raymond, ed. 1984. The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Grim, John A. 1983. The Shaman: Patterns of Religious Healing among the Ojibway Indians. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
———, ed. 2001. Indigenous Traditions and Ecology: The Interbeing of Community and Cosmos. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press for the Harvard Divinity School Center for the Study of World Religions.
Humphrey, Caroline, with Urunge Onon. 1996. Shamans and Elders: Experience, Knowledge, and Power among the Daur Mongols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Narby, Jeremy, and Francis Huxley. 2001.
Shamans through Time: 500 Years on the Path to Knowledge. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/ Putnam.
Pentikainen, Juha, ed. 1996. Shamanism and Northern Ecology. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Roseman, Marina. 1991. Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Vitebsky, Piers. 1995. Shamanism. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Wilbert, Johannes. 1993. Mystic Endowment: Religious Ethnography of the Warao Indians. Harvard University Press for the Harvard Divinity School Center for the Study of World Religions.
ENTHEOGENS (PSYCHEDELIC DRUGS) AND SHAMANISM
The term entheogen was initially proposed to free the study of shamanism and comparative religion from the pejorative connotations associated with terms like hallucinogen and psychedelic. Introduced in 1979, it is now widely accepted, both within professional disciplines and in common usage, as a more appropriate term than those words that imply that the visionary religious experience that results from the ingestion of the substance is illusory or otherwise inauthentic (Ott 1993, 104). Entheogens are “vision-producing drugs that figure in shamanic or religious rites” (Ruck et al. 1979, 146). Combining the ancient Greek adjective entheos (inspired, animate with deity) and the verbal root in genesis (becoming), it signifies “something that causes the divine to reside within one.” The ingestion of entheogens makes the celebrant consubstantial with the deity, providing a communion and shared existence mediating between the human and the Divine. The word’s strong spiritual implications make it a useful and accurate term for describing the historical-cultural role of such sacred foods in the study of religions. Entheobotany investigates a culture’s use of psychoactive plants within a sacred context. It relies upon aspects of anthropology, ethnology, psychology, philosophy, folklore and mythology studies, theology, and interdisciplinary methodologies.
An entheogen is any substance that, when ingested, catalyzes or generates an altered state
of consciousness deemed to have spiritual significance. Like shamanism itself, entheogenic spirituality is dependent upon, and defined by, this induction of altered states of consciousness. Altered states of consciousness are often considered indispensable to such typical shamanic practices as diagnosis, curing, soul retrieval, and communication with ancestor and nature spirits (Winkelman 2000). In myth, they are an integral element in the basic story of the hero or heroine who founds the pathways of communication between the human and the divine, and they are viewed as validating the community’s spiritual life (Schultes and Hofmann 1979).
Richard Rudgley and others have noted that, to the degree that present cultures do not value altered states of consciousness, they are aberrations, “out of step with the entire record of human experience” (Rudgley 1993, 172). As a product of just such an aberrant culture, modern scholarship has largely ignored the significance of altered states of consciousness and the means by which they are accessed, often dismissing them instead as the result of primitive spiritual instincts or mental illness (Harner 1973).
Although the present sociopolitical environment has marginalized the central role of en-theogenic substances in the study of religion and culture, this situation has begun to change. Much of the shift in attitude can be traced, ironically, to the same popular “psychedelic” movement, beginning in the 1950s, which fed a prejudice against these substances in academic and medical research. It has been pointed out, however, that members of the first generation of academics to take serious account of the role of entheogens were taking their university training during the 1960s (Devereux 1997).
The academic study of the entheogens is a comparatively recent phenomenon, as is recognition of them as a basic formative influence in the shaping of cultures (Schultes and Hofmann 1979). It is now widely accepted that en-theogens represent one of the most direct, powerful, reliable, and ancient means of inducing “authentic” shamanic altered states of consciousness. Entheogens may, in fact, be the only reliable way of inducing the often extreme alteration of consciousness commonly associated with ecstatic shamanic states.
When the entheogenic sacrament is taken, mythopoetic traditions are relived and rein
fused with profound immediacy and power. The entire congregation becomes sacralized, making its members worthy to be in the presence of Divinity, and of the subsequent gnostic vision that validates the culture’s theology.
Entheogenic epiphany is commonly described as a state where all distinctions and boundaries between the individual and the metaphysical realm dissolve into a mystical and consubstantial communion with the Divine. Thus, this ecstatic experience is interpreted as a pure and primal Consciousness, which brings the individual into direct contact with the root of being. Shamanic practices ascribe highest importance to the regular access to such transcendental states; this point of contact with divine influence ensures the undisturbed continuation of natural cycles and protects against the potential dangers of unappeased or neglected gods or spirits. The en-theogenic experience, though inexplicable in mundane language, is often considered more real and vibrant than ordinary consciousness (Schultes and Hofmann 1979).
Since shaman, entheogen, and deity come to share a common identity, all three become con-substantial, with both the human and the god or gods acquiring attributes of the ingested botanical agent that brought them together. (Ruck and Staples 1995). Weston La Barre (1972) concluded that the ecstasy-driven shamanic Ur-religion followed a cultural programming that inclined it to pursue the en-theogenic effects of plants. Eliade’s early opinion, retracted shortly before his death, that these plants represented a late and decadent form of shamanism was a profound error (Ott 1993), contributing to decades of academic marginalization.
The Entheogenic Roots of Religion
With the emergence of Neanderthal culture about 60,000 years ago, we find evidence of the specialized knowledge of medicinal plants linked to the burial of an apparent shaman figure at the Shanidar cave in Iraq. It seems clear that our rapidly evolving ancestors, at the very origin of the species, developed shamanic religious and ritual structures around chemically altered states of consciousness. The very impetus for human religiosity may well have originated in the awe felt by these earliest humans
after initial “accidental” ingestion of en-theogenic foodstuffs (Wasson et al. 1986; La Barre 1972; Schultes and Hofmann 1979; McKenna 1992; Winkelman 1996). The fact that cross-culturally the use of entheogens declines as social and political complexity increases (Dobkin de Rios 1984; Winkelman 1996) supports the hypothesis that entheogens were an important, and perhaps even necessary, primal fundament for the development of shamanism.
Recognition of the powerful spiritual forces that seemed to reside within these special plants would inevitably have become fundamental knowledge for the group. The gifted visionaries most adept at eliciting and enduring the experience would be enlisted as what we now call the shamans, and entrusted with establishing and managing the pathways of communication, appeasing and attempting to control the spiritual forces through ritual enactments and proscriptions. Experiences of contact gave rise to various myths, and further experimentation produced a sophisticated tradition of entheobotanical lore. Such a scenario would have been repeated innumerable times, with traditions sometimes diffusing rapidly, while elsewhere remaining isolated.
Archaeological evidence suggests that en-theogenic plants have been employed by humans since the most remote antiquity. All around the globe, evidence of prehistoric and shamanic use of entheogenic plants has been uncovered, from the 4,000-year-old mescal beans (Sophora segundiflora) found along the Rio Grande river basin and the cache of ancient peyote cacti (Lophophora williamsii) found in Texas to the mushroom stones (and related ceramics) of Mesoamerica, China, and Paleolithic Old Europe and the so-called mead-drinking Venus of Laussel, dating from the Upper Paleolithic.
Some of the earliest and most striking indications of the shamanic use of entheogens comes from the petroglyphs of the Tassili plateau in the southern Algerian desert, dating from between about 20,000 to 7,000 years ago. One is explicitly a shamanic figure with the face of a bee and mushrooms sprouting all over his body, indicating his consubstantiality with the spirit of the fungal entheogen. Another portrays individuals running with mushrooms in their hands.
A shamanic figure with the face of a bee and mushrooms sprouting all over his body. Tassili Plateau, Algeria. (Courtesy of Kathleen Harrison)
Still other examples of rock art identifying the painter with the entheogen occur in the Americas, such as the Panther Cave site in Texas, where the humanoid figures are clearly botanical, each having a cactus body with a fo-liaged arm, bearing thorn apple (Datura) fruits. In Siberia, where Amanita muscaria is still known and shamanically used in the twenty-first century, Bronze Age petroglyphs depict mushrooms and mushroom-spirits. Similarly archaic figures have been found elsewhere in Siberia, Scandinavia, Denmark, and around the world (Devereux 1997). Linguistic evidence for Siberian mushroom inebriation goes back at least 7,000 years (Wasson et al. 1986). In addition to the common “mushroom-stones” of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, figurines of shamans occur portrayed beneath the canopy of their fungal entheogen. Cross-culturally the artistic expression of shamanic visionary experience associated with en-theogens is common.
Male Figure with Dog, 200 B.C.E.-500 C.E.
Mexico, Nayarit. (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Proctor Stafford Collection)
Although this evidence is geographically scattered, there is a growing body of compelling data indicating that entheogens were an integral aspect of ancient rituals of shamanism, as they are in many primal cultures today. The cultural and ritual forms observed today probably resemble closely those of tens of thousands of years ago, and it is likely these entheogenic ritual forms have persisted in some places into the present without significant interruption. On the basis of Wasson’s findings, La Barre concluded that the entheogenic mushroom cults of the proto-Indo-European, Uralic, and Paleo-Siberian peoples were of sufficient antiquity to make Old and New World traditions ethnographically related. Hence he argued for the “very great antiquity of man’s ritual utilization of plants with psychotomimetic properties” (La Barre 1972, 270).
Though the importance of foods and dietary changes is widely accepted in contemporary
evolutionary theory, the specific biochemical mechanisms of genetic mutation remain unknown, as does the evolutionary role of psychoactive substances. These unique plants, in fact, may have played a significant role in human evolution, both physically, in offering selective advantages such as strength, endurance, and improved visual acuity, and due to their marked effects on cognition, which probably lent important stimulus to the emergence of the human capacity for abstract reasoning, symbolic thought, and language, as well as stimulating the religious capacities that distinguish our species (Dobkin de Rios 1984; Devereux 1997; McKenna 1992).
Anthropologically, humans are “tricksters.” That is, we are the animal characterized by the “tricks” it plays, with minor technological advances leading to major selective advantages. These technological tricks are a product of what is called abstraction reasoning, and our success as a species has resulted from accumulating and improving these tricks. It has been suggested that the intentional, continuing, and long-term use of these plant teachers is precisely the kind of trick that might account for the scientifically baffling sudden evolution of the protohuman neocortex between about one and two million years ago (McKenna 1992).
It is possible, too, that the human capacity for ecstatic integrative experience may have evolved in furtherance of the procreative sex drive. The mystical trance is often experienced as an orgasmic union with the cosmos, and it is important to note that psychoactive plants are commonly considered effective aphrodisiacs and are often used as such. If the transcendent emotions evolved to augment such a fundamental and primal instinct, the close similarity of sexual and entheogenic states suggests an extremely archaic cooperation of plants and humans in coevolution. Such speculation is supported by the fact that humans are capable of endogenously producing entheogenic compounds such as DMT (dimethyltryptamine) and have evolved very specific receptor sites, which enable plant-based neurotransmitters to induce liminal states.
Speculation and unanswered questions aside, it is clear that entheogens have played a far more significant role in the evolution of human cultures than has been generally recognized (Schultes and Hofmann 1979).
From a scientific perspective, it is important to consider that although there are comparatively few species of entheogenic plants, they manufacture a host of rare and unique chemicals, which, in turn, have profound effects on the human nervous system and neurochemistry. The effects that occur are remarkably universal, regardless of cultural conditioning. For instance, without knowledge of its effects on indigenous peoples, urban subjects under the influence of entheogens often report experiences that closely parallel well-known themes of shamanic experience. The cross-cultural similarity of experiences, as well as the interpretations of entheogenic states, reflects a commonality of underlying biological mechanisms (Winkelman 1996).
The Sociocultural Role of Entheogens Erika Bourguignon performed a cross-cultural study of altered states in 1973, and from a sample of 488, found that altered states of consciousness were institutionalized within a spiritual framework in 90 percent of these societies (Bourguignon 1973). Anthropologist Marlene Dobkin de Rios discussed the shamanic use of “hallucinogens” in eleven different cultures and found that similar traits emerged. She found that psychoactive substances were typically used in the following ways: magico-religiously, within a ceremonial context, to contact and celebrate spiritual forces, to diagnose or treat an illness, for divination, and to promote social solidarity (Dobkin de Rios 1984).
Some of the shamanic cultures that have placed a central emphasis on entheogens, even into modern times, include Siberian and Central Asian tribes, such as the Koryak, Chukchi, Ostyak, and Kamchadal; the Huichol of central Mexico; the cultures of Lower Mexico, Amazonia, and Peru; the ancestral Bwiti cult of westcentral Africa; and the Native cultures of North America.
Many other examples of intact entheobotani-cal traditions exist, while many more have been lost to the passage of time, or obscured due to the effects of heightened social and political organization as well as ongoing persecution. Also, it is common for cultures to adopt surrogates (such as alcoholic “spirits”) in the traditional role of the entheogen, the sacrament then becoming known to only a small minority, or lost completely. In such cases, artistic or mythological el
ements often preserve some distinguishable traces of the plant god. Even where ritual inebriation is generally shunned, as among certain Pueblo Indians, the shamans still exhibit a close spiritual tie with the plant that is used in their sacrament; a case in point is the relationship of Zuni rain priests with Datura stramonium (La Barre 1972).
Because hunter-gatherers tend not to ritualize or socialize the use of entheogens to the same degree observed in agricultural societies, some investigators have argued that psychoactive plants emerge into culture along with an agricultural economy. However, the fact that shamanic religion is more developed among hunter-gatherers supports the conclusion that such plants have always been used to broker personal relationships with spirits, even though agriculturalists attach a greater ritual and social significance to the entheogenic experience. Hence, the “great period of ritual entheogens” is the Neolithic, which corresponds with the beginning of agriculture (Wilson 1999, 9—10). The rituals temporarily recreate a more primal connection with nature in its chthonic and chaotic fullness, a connection that is needed in the new situation. With agriculture both a literal and psychical chasm opens between “culture” and “chaos,” and this dichotomy becomes the primary existential anxiety demanding the full attention of the community’s religious impulses. As the vitality of the chthonic lapses from consciousness, the loss continues to be felt, and it is expressed to some degree in all great and small “redemptive” religions that evolved in settled agricultural cultures (Wilson 1999). The entheogenic origins of these religions may be considered in terms of an impulse to revisit the more balanced spiritual consciousness of a preagricultural “golden age,” and specifically the need to reconnect with the primal root of all creation. Thus entheogenic experience becomes the personal touchstone of contact with natural forces (La Barre 1972).
The shift of the focus of anxiety from that present in a hunting ecology, dependent as it is on the fortunes of the hunt, to that found in a settled agricultural life, dependent on the vagaries of weather, started in the Neolithic; this shift resulted in a concomitant change from a more archaic form of shamanism to religions with defined priestly roles. It is this change that can help account for the later accretions that
have obscured most of the archaic, shamanic elements of what became the advanced agricultural civilizations (La Barre 1972).
The earliest and most historically significant mythological and religious traditions prominently feature magical foods such as the Mesopotamian “herb of immortality,” the Vedic soma (and Avestan haoma), as well as the Chinese ling chih, “fungus of immortality,” the nectar and ambrosia that fed the gods of ancient Greece, and the eye-opening Judeo-Christian “forbidden fruit” of the Garden of Eden.
Just as the entheogen figures mythopoetically as the object of the hero’s quest, which as a recurrent theme is itself derived from the tales about the culture’s founding shamans (Ruck and Staples 1995), it functions as well as the agent in initiation, where the role of the hero and “primordial shaman” is reenacted on a personal level: The individual achieves full membership in the sacred community by partaking of the entheogenic sacrament (La Barre 1972). Self-sacrifice, in the form of preparatory ordeals such as periods of prolonged fasting, special diets, difficult pilgrimages, sexual abstention, exposure to extremes of heat or cold, sleep deprivation, and flagellation, is often ritualized as the prerequisite or circumstance for the ingestion of the sacred food. Generally such sacrifice is considered the means for attaining the ritual purity necessary to elicit the desired experience from the plant spirit.
Such trials are especially common in the context of initiations or prolonged vision quests, where the subject may experience an ecstatic death and rebirth (often described in terms of dismemberment and reintegration). The ecstatic death can be understood as an extension and result of approaching literal death through starvation, dehydration, exhaustion, or the like. Although entheogens are often taken as “medicine” to relieve pain and confer uncommon strength and stamina, they are also used (and in heroic doses) as the catalyst of a culminating trial in the candidate’s initiation or petition. Indeed, the entheogen may be required to make the supreme ordeal physically bearable. Among both the earlier hunter-gatherers and the subsequent agricultural peoples, entheogenic plants have always been revered and feared. Such respect is demonstrated by their exalted status in mythology and by the secrecy and taboos that often surround their use. Thus, the seriousness
and danger attributed to these plants have always been a defining characteristic. They have a frightening and uncanny aura, which contributes to their powerful potential as catalysts of personal and communal integration (Schultes and Hofmann 1979).
Perhaps most often the entheogen assumes the role of a “plant teacher,” revealing previously unknown or inaccessible information and offering a reliable means of inducing trance states for common shamanic tasks such as healing, resolving conflict, finding lost objects, and otherwise accessing information by nonordinary (i.e., “psychic” or telepathic) means. Lacking organic, pathological models for understanding disease, the shaman uses entheogens as the ultimate medicine, and although other remedies may be known and employed, these “plants of the gods” are ascribed a superior sacred status as panaceas.
Often confronted with difficult hermeneutic dilemmas, students of shamanism have long recognized that entheogenic and other altered states of consciousness—being inherently “mystical” experiences—are not easily described by means of common language. Many reports support the assertion that entheogenic altered states of consciousness and peak religious experiences are identical. Thus, “being intoxicated with God” is indeed a very accurate description not only of entheogenic states, but also of mystical experience, as well as shamanic ecstasy.
Mark Hoffman
Carl A. P. Ruck
See also: Archaeology of Shamanism; Central and South American Shamanism; Classical World Shamanism; Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Shamans; Huichol Shamanism; “Magic,” Power, and Ritual in Shamanism; Peyote Ritual Use
References and further reading:
Bourguignon, Erika, ed. 1973. Religion, Altered
States of Consciousness, and Social Change.
Columbus: Ohio University Press.
Devereux, Paul. 1997. The Long Trip: A Prehistory of Psychedelia. New York: Penguin Books.
Dobkin de Rios, Marlene. 1984. Hallucinogens: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Harner, Michael J., ed. 1973. Hallucinogens and
Shamanism. New York: Oxford University Press.
La Barre, Weston. 1972. “Hallucinogens and the Shamanic Origins of Religion.” Pp. 261—278 in Flesh of the Gods: The Ritual use of Hallucinogens. Edited by Peter T. Furst. Rev. ed. New York: Praeger.
McKenna, Terence. 1992. Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge. New York: Bantam Books.
Ott, Jonathan. 1993. Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic Drugs, their Plant Sources and History.
Kennewick, WA: Natural Products Company.
Ruck, Carl A. P., et al. 1979. “Entheogens.” Journal of Psychedelic Drugs 11, nos. 1—2: 145-146.
Ruck, Carl A. P., and (Blaise) Danny Staples. 1995. The World of Classical Myth: Gods and Goddesses, Heroes and Heroines. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
Rudgley, Richard. 1993. Essential Substances: A Cultural History of Intoxicants in Society. New York: Kodansha International.
----------. 1999. The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age. New York: Free Press.
Schultes, Richard E., and Albert Hofmann. 1979. Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing and Hallucinogenic Powers. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Wasson, Gordon R. 1968. Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Wasson, Gordon R., et al. 1986. Persephone’s Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Wilson, Peter L. 1999. Ploughing the Clouds: The Search for Irish Soma. San Francisco: City Lights Books.
Winkelman, Michael. 1996. “Psychointegrator Plants: Their Roles in Human Culture, Consciousness and Health.” Yearbook of Cross-Cultural Medicine and Psychotherapy 1995: 9-53.
———. 2000. Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey.
ENTOPTIC IMAGES
Entoptic images are luminous, scintillating, geometric visual percepts that are perceived in an early, or “light,” stage of altered conscious
ness. They are also known, somewhat confusingly, as phosphenes and form constants. Some writers prefer to reserve the term phosphenes for comparable percepts that are generated within the eye itself, as, for example, by pressure on the eyeball. By contrast, entoptic means “within the optic system” and may thus include phosphenes and geometric percepts that are wired into the optic nerve or the visual cortex. Form constant refers to the cross-cultural nature of the geometric percepts: Their forms are universally constant.
Entoptic forms are perceived independently of an external light source. They include bright dots that may appear as clouds or as chains, zigzags, nested catenary curves, grid patterns, jagged sun-burst forms, and sets of parallel lines. All the forms are visible with the eyes open or closed; when the eyes are open the forms are projected onto veridical percepts, partially obliterating them. They also flicker, change from one form to another, and expand through the field of vision until they pass beyond the periphery. Initially, subjects find the array of entoptic images bewildering, but practice makes it possible to discern the individual forms.
Although the existence of entoptic images was known in the nineteenth century, some of the best work on them was done in the 1920s by Heinrich Kluver (1966). He and other researchers found that the percepts could be induced by a wide range of stimulants, including ingestion of psychotropic substances, electrical stimulation of the brain, pathological conditions, including migraine (the so-called fortification illusion is well known to migraine sufferers), sensory deprivation, pain, and aural and physical rhythmic driving. The means of induction is related to emotional circumstances: Entoptic percepts induced by psychotropes are far more emotionally charged that those produced by, say, clinical electrical stimulation.
As subjects move into deeper, more autistic altered states of consciousness, they try to make sense of their entoptic percepts. They interpret them as images of emotionally charged objects or items prominent in their mythical system. This stage has been designated stage two and called construal. In stage three, deep altered states, entoptic images become peripheral in the visionary field, or integrated with true hallucinations of animals, monsters, therianthropic fig
ures, and so forth. Such iconic hallucinations are not in themselves entoptic, though they may have entoptic elements within them; they do not derive from the actual wiring of the brain. At this stage, emotions may be ecstatic or charged with fear (whence good or bad “trips”).
Later, a number of researchers discerned formal parallels between entoptic percepts and images that were believed to be shamanistic in origin. Among these writers were Max Knoll, Joseph Eichmeier, and Oskar Hofer. It was, however, Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff who first explored, rather than simply noting, a possible association between the images of stage one and shamanistic visions. Working with the Tukano and other shamanistic people of South America, he found that they painted on their bodies, bark-cloth, ceramics, and houses formalized patterns that they themselves said they saw in yaje- induced altered states of consciousness. Set side by side, the patterns painted by the Tukano were clearly homologous with the entoptic forms that Knoll and others had identified. Reichel-Dolmatoff concluded that the Tukano were painting entoptic images. He also found that the Tukano ascribed meanings to the forms: For instance, parallel chains of small dots were said to be the Milky Way, the destination of shamanistic flight, while wavy parallel lines were said to be the “thoughts of the SunFather” (1978, 88). A spiral was said to symbolize incest and the threat of pollution. The Tukano told Reichel-Dolmatoff that this design element derived from the imprint left in the sand by the lower end of a ritual trumpet, an instrument of great importance in Tukano religion, involved in the maintenance of exogamic rules and male supremacy. It was this formal similarity that led them to identify their entoptic percept.
These few instances exemplify two key points. All shamans who enter altered states of consciousness have the potential to see the same geometric entoptic images because they are “wired into” the human nervous system. Communities tend to focus on certain forms and to ignore others. The meanings that they ascribe to each of the selected forms are also culturally specific; it would not, for example, be possible for an outsider to guess the meaning that the Tukano ascribed to the spiral, one of the most common entoptic forms, the one that leads into the deepest levels of altered
states. The forms are universal, but the meanings are contingent. The Tukano serve as a useful example, but clearly other shamanistic communities could readily be cited.
The insights of Knoll, Reichel-Dolmatoff, and others were taken up by rock art researchers with mixed results. Critics of the rock art work have pointed out that the presence of a single spiral does not necessarily mean a shamanistic art. The researchers have rightly responded that no one proposes such a simplistic inference. To clarify the debate, they have distinguished between two kinds of context: those rock arts for which there is some ethnographic suggestion that the people who made the images were shamanistic, and those for which there is no ethnography. Often, as in the case of southern African San rock art, associated images of ethnographically well-documented San shamanistic trance dancers suggest that the geometrics (usually somewhat rare) incorporated into true hallucinations of the spirit realm were probably entoptic. Where there is no ethnography at all, researchers should be circumspect. They need to find out how many design elements parallel entoptic forms; one or two elements will not be persuasive, but a wide range could be more significant. Even then, researchers should examine other images to see if any are comparable with stage three hallucinations before suggesting a shamanistic context. Some of the most successful research on entoptic elements in rock art has been conducted in southern Africa and North America, where there is abundant ethnography to suggest that the arts are shamanistic.
J. D. Lewis-Williams
See also: !Kung Healing, Ritual, and Possession; Art and Shamanism; Central and South American Shamanism; Neuropsychology of Shamanism; Rock Art and Shamanism;
Visions and Imagery: Western Perspectives
References and further reading:
Eichmeier, Joseph, and Oskar Hofer. 1974.
Endogene Bildmuster. Munich: Urban and Schwarzenberg.
Hedges, Kenneth. 1976. “Southern California Rock Art as Shamanistic Art.” American Indian Rock Art 2: 126—138.
Kluver, Heinrich. [1928] 1966. Reprint. Mescal and Mechanisms of Hallucinations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Knoll, Max. 1958. “Anregung geometrischer Figuren und anderer subjektiver Lichtmuster in Elektrischen Feldern.” Zeitschrift fur Psychologie 17: 110—126.
Lewis-Williams, J. David. 1995. “Seeing and Construing: The Making and ’Meaning’ of a Southern African Rock Art Motif.”
Cambridge Archaeological Journal 5: 3—23.
Lewis-Williams, J. David, and Thomas A.
Dowson. 1988. “Signs of All Times: Entoptic Phenomena in Upper Palaeolithic Art.” Current Anthropology 29: 201—245.
Oster, Gerald. 1970. “Phosphenes.” Scientific American 222: 83—87.
Reichel-Dolmatoff, Geraldo. 1978. Beyond the Milky Way: Hallucinatory Imagery of the Tukano Indians. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin America Center.
Whitley, David S. 2000. The Art of the Shaman: Rock Art of California. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
ETHNOCENTRISM AND SHAMANISM
Ethnocentrism refers to the tendency to see, interpret, and, especially, judge other cultures in terms of one’s own culture and cultural suppositions. In its most commonly applied understanding, it refers to the belief that one’s own culture is superior to other cultures, leading to grotesque misunderstandings of the behaviors of others, intellectual distortions of what they believe, and even violent persecutions of others for their beliefs and practices. Ethnocentrism in all its forms has influenced the various ways outsiders have viewed and reacted to shamanism.
As described originally in what has been considered its classic form, in Siberia and Central Asia, shamanism refers to a complex of beliefs and practices revolving around an ecstatic magico-religious specialist, or shaman, in a small, close-knit community (prototypically though not exclusively a community that lives by hunting and gathering), of the kind found among the Tungus (Evenki), Chuckchi, Buryat, Yakut (Sakha), and other Siberian tribes (Shi-rokogoroff 1982; Vitebsky 2001). The shamanic candidate suffers a profound personal crisis (the calling); after recovering, the candi
date is considered a shaman and performs dramatic rituals for the community. These rituals may include mystifying feats and the shaman’s entering trance, sometimes by ingesting hallucinogenic plants, and always associated with drumming. In trance, the shaman’s soul travels to upper and lower worlds and battles spirits and retrieves lost souls in order to heal individuals or ensure the community’s well-being (e.g., by enabling successful hunting). The shaman may also summon spirits to help in the spiritual quest. Other magico-religious complexes that resemble Siberian shamanism to varying degrees have been identified throughout the Americas, South and Southeast Asia, and other areas (Townsend 1999, 429—433; Vitebsky 2001, 26—51). All of these forms of shamanism have provoked ethnocentric reactions, but two kinds of reaction stand out in the literature: the various reactions of the state (notably the Soviet and Western colonial governments, with their respective ideological and religious foundations) and the reactions of scholars (especially those scholars shaped by western European and American culture).
Ethnocentric States, Their Ideologies or Religions, and Shamanism
Most of the areas of classical Siberian and Asian shamanism came under Soviet Communist rule in 1917, and by the late 1920s the regime had instigated a widespread campaign to eliminate shamanism from that huge region. According to the Soviets’ Marxist-based ideology, all religions promoted backwardness and a “false ideology,” a cover or facade for some form of domination over the people, and thus constituted a major obstacle to the Soviet’s socialist agenda. Since shamanism did not have any churches or temples that the Soviet state could destroy, shamans themselves became the focus of the persecution. Moreover, since shamans were so essential to their tribal communities and their people believed that they held spiritual powers, the Soviets considered them particularly threatening and branded them “exploiters” and “enemies of the people.” Typically, the shamans’ ritual paraphernalia were destroyed, and they were exiled to labor camps, tortured, or killed, as in one dramatic account of shamans being dropped from helicopters and told to fly (Vitebsky 2001, 136). As part of
the campaign, local representatives of the League of Militant Godless gathered information on shamans, spread anti-shaman propaganda, and tried to replace shamanism with the Lenin-Stalin Cult, in which Lenin and Stalin were portrayed as all-powerful solar deities who could defeat all evils (Bodley 1982, 116).
Earlier in North America after the American Civil War (1861—1865), the U.S. government launched a similarly ethnocentric campaign of cultural genocide against the Indians and their shamanic beliefs and practices. Initially aiming to “pacify” and to “civilize the savage,” so the argument went, the government confined Indians to reservations en masse and pressured them to practice Euro-American customs, including Christianity, in place of their shamanic religions. Because the Euro-Americans in the big cities at the time continued to view the Indians as savages, lesser beings on an evolutionary scale who could not know what was good and right, they came to believe that the Indians had to be forced to learn. By 1889, President Harrison declared an urgent policy of forced acculturation (forced adoption of American culture). Indians were to be rigorously forced to abandon their own beliefs and practices, and completely reeducated, which, it was declared, would ensure a better life for them and for the many pioneers who wanted their land (Kehoe 1989, 14—15, 28—30). Indian children were removed from their homes, put up for adoption by Euro-American families, or placed in brutal boarding schools, often run by the U.S. Army and especially designed to change the culture of the children (see photos). Laws forbade “pagan” Indian ceremonies, as the Indian Bureau feared they would inhibit the spread of Christian beliefs and values. Among the Washo Indians, for instance, shamanism was practically eradicated by the 1890s during the forced acculturation of American Indian children (Bodley 1982, 117; Handelman 1967, 447—448).
Earlier still, in Central and South America, zealous sixteenth century Catholic missionaries tied to the Spanish colonial invasion viewed and judged shamanism from their own European cultural framework, which was founded on Catholic cosmology, notions of good and evil spirits, and prominent beliefs at the time in Europe about “witches,” “witchcraft,” and making pacts with the Devil. Consequently, when they encountered Indian shamans who
spoke of spells and spirits and used hallucinogens in their rituals to see and communicate with these spirits, the missionaries concluded that the whole practice was a manifestation of the Devil—their Christian Devil, that is! But the Indians claimed that many of the beings they contacted were “helper spirits,” who had helped them in their own personal spiritual transformations and given them the ability to heal. Nevertheless, the missionaries could neither understand nor accept the Indians’ own and very different interpretations of their shamanic practices. In the missionaries’ ethnocentric view, the communication with spirits through shamanic trance and soul voyages could only refer to “talking with the devil” (Vitebsky 2001, 130-131).
Supported by the missionaries’ perspective, the Spanish crown sought to manage the diverse indigenous populations by unifying them around the Catholic worldview and faith (Quezada 1991, 38). But this was a difficult task. By the mid-seventeenth century, for instance, the Franciscan bishop of Quito, Ecuador, Pena Montenegro, was writing in his instruction manual for missionaries that the major obstacle to the spread of the gospels was still those Indian sorcerers and magicians (i.e., shamans): “They resist with diabolical fervor so that the light of truth shall not discredit their fabulous acts” (cited in Taussig 1984, 96-97). Yet, he added, their beliefs and actions were understandable: “Utilizing his malign astuteness, it was easy for the devil to set up his tyrannical empire amongst them, for they are people, brutish and ignorant, whom it is easy to deceive” (cited in Taussig 1984, 97).
Not surprisingly, the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition prescribed the kinds of beliefs and practices that must be punished, such as the following recorded for New Spain (Mexico) during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: healing the sick through contact with supernatural beings; using hallucinogens to achieve a magical trance and intentionally contacting supernatural beings; using prayers and idolatrous imagery in curing ceremonies; and using magical divinations for the diagnosis and prognosis of illnesses (Quezada 1991, 52). All of these were fundamental to shamanic Indian cu-randeros (healers) in the region.
Ethnocentric reactions to shamanism were hardly limited to Christian missionaries and
Having just arrived at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, Chiricahua Apache children pose for a photo in 1886 (above). The institution attempted to eliminate traditional Native American culture, as demonstrated in the picture below, taken four months later, of the same group of children. (John N. Choate/Corbis)
the Soviet, American, and Western European states. Representatives of Buddhist, Hindu, Confucianist, Daoist, and Shinto traditions all encountered shamanic communities in the areas into which they spread and also persecuted them, or else strongly pressured them to assimilate or syncretize (merge elements) with their religions. One result was the development of hybrid forms of shamanism throughout South and Southeast Asia, some more Buddhist in character, as in Nepal and among Tibet’s Bon-po shamans, some more Hindu, as among the Sora, nestled in Hindu-dominated areas of India. In Mongolia, Lamaist Buddhist missionaries from the Tibetan area declared firmly that shamanism was the old, wrong way of seeing things and attacked the shamans and their practices. In Indonesia and Malaysia, shamanism was viewed as an abnormal religion, not only by Christian missionaries allied to the colonial European states but also by Islamic leaders among the merchant class (Vitebsky 2001, 38-41, 135).
Ethnocentric Scholars and Shamanism
Scholars have also drawn on fundamental assumptions from their own cultures and scientific paradigms to analyze shamans and interpret shamanic phenomena. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for instance, theories of cultural evolution characterized culture and religion as evolving from the most primitive forms to the most advanced forms, the culture and religion of the theorist always being considered the most advanced. Such theories dominated European and American thought, and many scholars at the time imposed such models of cultural evolution onto their studies, like a template. In this way, for example, several scholars “found” animism (a belief in souls in all things, including inanimate objects), which they formulated as a characteristic of the most primitive forms of religion, in the shamanism they studied, when in fact it was not there. Note, for example, Shirokogoroff (1982, 53—54, 393) on I. A. Lopatin’s imposed evolutionist rendering of Goldi shamanism and Sii-kala (1978, 20) on J. Stadling’s interpretation of animism as evidence of the “most primitive religious thinking” of humanity in shamanism. Ethnocentric analyses of shamanism by Robert R. Marrett, James Frazer, Marcel Mauss, and
other evolutionists “found” magic, and the “primitive mentality” they associated with it, in shamanic beliefs and rituals (e.g., Langdon 1992, 7-9).
In a similar vein, scholars have been seen as imposing their own cultural frameworks when they have characterized the shaman’s trance and visionary experiences as psychopathological. Russian ethnographer Waldemar Bogoraz, for instance, called the Siberian Chuckchi shamans he studied mentally deranged or crazy, as did psychoanalytically trained American anthropologists such as Alfred Kroeber, Ralph Linton, George Devereux, and Anthony F. C. Wallace (Townsend 1999, 454-455). Silverman’s (1967) diagnosis of shamans as schizophrenic was particularly influential and echoed Kroeber’s earlier argument that shamanic societies simply reward their neurotics and psychotics with a socially sanctioned role of healer or ritual specialist that relies on their shifting states of consciousness.
However, psychologist Richard Noll (1989) challenged Silverman’s schizophrenia model of shamanism and a similar one by Soviet scholars, arguing that ethnocentrism was behind them. When Noll (1983) actually compared the records of shamans from forty-two cultures with the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia in the standard diagnostic manual of mental disorders (DSM-III, The Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders-III), he found glaring phenomenological differences, which Silverman and the Soviets had bypassed in their analyses. Simply, unlike schizophrenics and other psychotics, who are helpless victims of their states and visions, the shamans control their states, entering and leaving at will; control the spirits that appear to them; and do it all for a social function, which is hardly true of schizophrenics (450-454). What must really be behind their “false and misleading” use of the term schizophrenia, Noll argued, is their psychoanalytic or Marxist-Leninist devaluation of religion and religious experience. Thus, Noll concluded, their schizophrenia model “is in reality a Western (and Soviet) ethnocentric distortion based on the misapplication of psychiatric/medical schemata to experiences encountered in ASC [altered states of consciousness]” (48).
Noll emphasized that the shaman’s psyche must be seen as stable because the shaman is in
control. But perhaps a more fundamental consideration is whether the culture has, in a sense, “told” the shaman how to act, how to experience and recount the experiences. That is, are the forms of shamanic behaviors and experiences modeled by the shaman’s culture (in which case they function as symbols) or do they depend on the mental state of the individual shaman (in which case they can be seen as symptoms)? If there are cultural beliefs about how the shamanic experience should be, the shaman would have been imbued with these beliefs long before having any shamanic experiences, and thus the shaman’s experience would potentially have been shaped by them (Langdon 1992, 6). The case of the Guajiro Indians of Venezuela and Colombia is particularly revealing. The Guajiro have specific cultural beliefs about the traits of the ideal shaman, and these traits coincide, generally, with the Western cultural representation of hysteria. Consequently, Westerners readily misjudge the Gua-jiro shaman’s behaviors as reflecting hysteria instead of Guajiro culture (Perrin 1992).
A third area easily subject to ethnocentric evaluation is the shaman’s use of what appear to be simply conjurers’ tricks during seances, and particularly during healing. For instance, Siberian shamans have been observed cutting off their own heads, opening and closing their own or their patients’ bodies, mysteriously creating complex soundscapes of animal spirit calls everywhere and seemingly out of the blue, and, as most often reported the world over, sucking out disease-causing objects from their patients, after having secretly inserted them in their mouths before the “magical surgery” (Siikala 1978, 113-114, 135-136; Taussig 1998, 227-228). Such tricks of the trade suggest to many scholars that shamans are simply exploitative charlatans. But at the same time, ethnographers have frequently reported that the same shamans really did believe in the healing, and that they sought other shamans when ill and claimed they were healed, despite knowing full well that tricks were involved (e.g., Taussig 1998, 225, 228).
Don Handelman actually asked a Washo Indian shaman of western Nevada about the healing tricks he had observed in the shaman’s work, and the shaman explained that the tricks were like the other paraphernalia and really beside the point: “I use them only to gain atten
tion of the sick person, nothing more” (Han-delman 1967, 457). This is akin to Sergei Shi-rokogoroff’s argument that the tricks he and others observed among Siberian shamans served to establish a necessary kind of hypnotic rapport that engendered the healing results (1982, 330-334). But perhaps more directly to the point is the case of the Kwakiutl Indians of British Colombia and the healing tricks of their shamans. According to the Kwakiutl, the “tricks” are actually techniques for directing the spirits, who, they believe, mimic the shaman’s moves. When the shaman is sucking on a patient, the spirits are also sucking, and when he removes the disease-causing object (which he has palmed), the spirits remove the real cause of the disease. That’s why, amongst the Kwakiutl, a shaman would consult another shaman when ill. He believes the techniques, if precisely executed, ensure the spirits’ proper curative actions. Thus, in the context of a shaman’s own system, the “tricks” may well be part of the shaman’s healing techniques and integral to beliefs about inducing spirits to heal, and not at all manifestations of charlatanism, as those who look at the phenomena from an ethnocentric perspective assume (Taussig 1998, 235-236).
Patric V. Giesler
See also: Central and South American
Shamanism; Colonialism and Shamanism; Curanderismo; Healing and Shamanism; History of the Study of Shamanism;
Museum Collections; Psychopathology and Shamanism; Siberian Shamanism; Trance, Shamanic; Visions and Imagery: Western Perspectives
References and further reading:
Bodley, John H. 1982. Victims of Progress. 2d ed. Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield Publishing.
Brown, Michael Fobes. 1989. “Dark Side of the Shaman: The Traditional Healer’s Art Has Its Perils.” Natural History, November, 8-10.
Handelman, Don. 1967. “The Development of a Washo Shaman.” Ethnology 6, no. 4: 444-464.
Kehoe, Alice Beck. 1989. The Ghost Dance: Ethnohistory and Revitalization. Chicago: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
———. 2000. Shamans and Religion: An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
Langdon, E. Jean Matteson. 1992. “Introduction: Shamanism and Anthropology.” Pp. 1—21 in Portals of Power: Shamanism in South America. Edited by E. Jean Matteson Langdon and Gerhard Baer. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Noll, Richard. 1983. “Shamanism and Schizophrenia: A State-Specific Approach to the ’Schizophrenia Metaphor’ of Shamanic States.” American Ethnologist 10: 443—459.
———. 1989. “What Has Really Been Learned About Shamanism?” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 21, no. 1: 47—50.
Perrin, Michel. 1992. “The Body of the Guajiro Shaman.” Pp. 103—125 in Portals of Power: Shamanism in South America. Edited by E. Jean Matteson Langdon and Gerhard Baer. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Quezada, Noemi. 1991. “The Inquisition’s Repression of Curanderos. ” Pp. 37—57 in Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World. Edited by Mary Elizabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Shirokogoroff, Sergei Mikhailovich. 1982. Reprint. Psychomental Complex of the Tungus. New York: AMS Press. Original edition, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1935.
Siikala, Anna-Leena. 1978. The Rite Technique of the Siberian Shaman. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica.
Silverman, Julian. 1967. “Shamanism and Acute Schizophrenia.” American Anthropologist 69: 21-31.
Taussig, Michael. 1984. “History as Sorcery.” Representations 7: 87-109.
———. 1998. “Viscerality, Faith, and Skepticism: Another Theory of Magic.” Pp. 221-256 in In Near Ruins: Cultural Theory at the End of the Century. Edited by Nicholas B. Dirks. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Townsend, Joan B. 1999. “Shamanism.” Pp. 429-469 in Anthropology of Religion: A Handbook. Edited by Stephen D. Glazier. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Vitebsky, Piers. 2001. Shamanism. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. First American edition, Boston, Little, Brown, 1995.
EXORCISM
See Demonic Possession and Exorcism; Extraction
EXTRACTION
Extraction is the practice of removing a spiritual intrusion from a person and neutralizing it. The basic idea behind this practice is that the intrusion causes psychological or physical illness, and removing the intrusion effects a cure in the patient.
Extraction is a very old practice and, though not limited to cultures in which shamanism plays a strong role, is frequently found in shamanic practices worldwide. The idea that evil spirits are the source of personal or communal disease predates the germ theory by several millennia. Given primitive cultures’ animistic worldview, which sees every object, animal, and person as possessing an animating spirit, removing intruding powers is a logical means of effecting healing. The theory of possession by evil spirits or demons, and the possibility of exorcising them, is a direct descendant of these earlier concepts of disease-causing, intruding spirits.
The presence of malevolent spirits in itself is not enough to account for illness; conditions must be conducive to the evil gaining enough strength to cause harm. Many folk practices and rituals attempt to preserve the strength of individuals and communities. Rites of propitiation have the dual purpose of appeasing a deity and maintaining the ritual benefactors’ vigorous immunity to disease and disaster. Charms and rituals are deemed a success as long as the warder remains well. Lack of success is attributed to not performing the ritual properly, the presence of exceptionally strong evil spirits or demons, or just plain bad luck. Vulnerability to illness may also result from failure to observe taboos, being targeted by a practitioner of black magic, or physical changes such as childbirth, menses, battle wounds, or overexposure to the elements. Anything that contributes to physical or spiritual weakness makes holes in a person’s spirit, and harmful intruding powers take residence in these holes.
Regardless of the cause, when a normally healthy person takes ill, the shaman or local
wise one steps forward to effect a cure. The cure involves removing the spirit causing the disease, neutralizing or destroying it so that it cannot infect anyone else, and perhaps carrying out a practice to restore the affected individual to health.
The form of the extraction itself varies. All or part of the community might be involved, or only the shaman and his or her apprentice. The extraction might be removed by sucking it out, pulling it out with the hand or with a sacred object, or scaring it away with noise, threats, and smoke. Other means of removing an extraction have been practiced, but these are the most common.
Before attempting removal of the evil spirit, the shaman prepares by calling on guardian and helping spirits to assist in diagnosing the cause of the affected person’s disease. The shaman’s spirit helpers allow the shaman to locate the intrusion and remove it. Extracting intrusive powers is considered to be very dangerous, as the intrusion can enter the shaman’s body and cause sickness. Extractions are usually not attempted unless the shaman is feeling very powerful.
Once the intrusion is identified and localized to a part of the body, the ritual of extraction begins. Using drums, rattles, or other percussive instruments to enter the shamanic trance state, the shaman focuses on the intrusion and grabs it. Once removed, the invading evil spirit may be burned, hurled into water, put into a piece of raw meat, or otherwise transferred to a neutralizing medium. The medium containing the intrusion is typically destroyed. If the intrusion is thrown into a fire or body of water, however, it is considered to be neutralized. Again, specifics of the practice vary; those listed are the most common.
After removal of the intrusion, the affected person may need to undergo some rite or com
plete an activity to restore his or her strength. The shaman then gives the patient a prescription for recovery, perhaps eating special foods, drinking herbal beverages, ritual cleansings, or some other practice specified by the shaman’s helping spirits. Frequently a power animal or soul retrieval will be performed to fill the spiritual gap created when the intrusion has been removed.
Note that extraction is practiced today by contemporary urban shamans as well as by traditional folk healers around the world. Modern shamans understand that there is both a physical reason for the malady as well as a spiritual one and recommend treating the illness conventionally as well as shamanically. Because Western scientists proved a link between psychological imbalances and susceptibility to disease, the concept that a ritual aimed at restoring health will strengthen the body’s ability to heal is gaining wider acceptance in the medical community.
Trisha Lepp
See also: Demonic Possession and Exorcism;
Healing and Shamanism
References and further reading:
Achterberg, Jeanne. 1985. Imagery in Healing:
Shamanism and Modern Medicine. Boston: Shambhala.
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Frazer, James G. 1981. The Golden Bough: The Roots of Religion and Folklore. New York: Random House.
Harner, Michael. 1990. The Way of the Shaman. New York: Harper Collins.
FIRE AND HEARTH
Heat and fire are magical attributes in both primitive and more advanced societies. Pyrola-treia, or fire worship, is common in many cultures throughout the world. Shamanic concepts of fire are related to mythological and religious perceptions of fire as a worldwide symbol of the invisible life force that strives to return to heaven by consuming earthly substance. Fire is constantly in motion, moves like a living being, “eats” through the process of combustion, and throws off light and heat, which are necessary for human survival. Associations of fire with the sun and sun worship are common. Ritual use of fire as a focal point, for purification and meditation, and as a symbol of deity is still practiced today.
The shamanic concept of fire sees energy, a force of transformation, and the power to cleanse. Many shamans work exclusively during the night, so fire is a practical part of the ceremony, providing light, heat, and a focus for group work. Fire is a source of shamanic power and mystic force.
Magico-religious power is conceived of as hot or burning in many cultures. Australian sorcerers and sorceresses have so much inner fire that they are not allowed to burn anything. Hindus describe powerful divinities as “possessing fire,” “burning,” or “very hot.” In the Solomon Islands, someone with a great deal of personal power (mana) is considered to be burning.
Heat and fire may be seen as internal powers that a shaman must cultivate to remain strong. On the Dobu Island of New Guinea, magic is associated with heat and fire; sorcerers keep their body “dry” and “burning” by eating spicy foods and drinking salt water. The Dobu also believe that fire originated from an old woman’s vagina, and magical techniques are divided be
tween the sexes. In India, yogic practice includes the concept of tapas, inner heat, which is cultivated through ascetic practices or magic. Tapas is a creative force, one a shaman would conceive of as power. South American shamans use fire and heat as a means to access ecstatic states.
The power to handle fire is considered proof of individual shamanic and personal power. The Chukchee shamans would drum to “heat” their bodies, that is, to build magical power, and then cut themselves open, swallow coals, or touch hot iron during competitive demonstrations of their powers. Many shamans practice fire tricks, such as handling hot coals, as a means of proving the depth of their trance state and to indicate their power through mastery of fire. Being burned or demonstrating insensitivity to fire by handling it may be initiations in themselves or proof that an initiatory test has been passed.
The Ojibwa shamans are fire handlers who are unhurt by touching burning coals. Zuni shamans specialize in fire tricks, including swallowing coals, fire walking, touching heated metal without being burned, and most dramatically, burning a man to ashes, minutes before he is resurrected and appears at another ceremony far away. Fijian shamans are able to walk over burning coals and white-hot stones. The Fijian shaman can give this power over fire to the whole tribe. Siberian shamans are believed to swallow burning coals.
Fire and smoke are a means to transport the spirit to other worlds. The Buryat, Chukchee, and Koryak of North Asia believed that burning the body allowed the spirit to rise skyward, carried by the smoke. The spirits of people struck by lightening, as well as those who died a heroic death, were also believed to pass into the sky realm. Burning the body to liberate the
A shaman leaps onto a pile of burning twigs, ca. 1901-1933. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)
soul and transform the deceased into spirit is a common funerary practice throughout the world. Burnt offerings of various kinds also reflect beliefs about the ability of fire, and its resultant smoke, to carry prayers to heaven.
A shaman seeking access to the spirit world may ride a column of smoke or fire while in a trance state. Use of fire or smoke as a means of ascent can be found in Eskimo, Melanesian, and ancient Iranian cultures. In Melanesia, flames that leap into the sky are but one of many paths for accessing the Upper World. Ur
ban shamanic practitioners may use fire or smoke as a “road” to the Upper World.
The Maori art of poi, twirling balls on the ends of strings, has evolved into fire twirling, an activity that appears in contemporary urban rave subcultures. Some modern fire twirlers acknowledge the shamanic origins of fire handling and describe the state of mind achieved through fire twirling as ecstatic. Fire twirling and other techno-shamanic practices are areas ripe for study.
Trisha Lepp
References and further reading:
Bonwick, James. 1976. Reprint. Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions. New York: Arno Press. Original edition, London: Griffith, Faran, 1894.
Dioszegi, V-s, and Mihaly Hoppal. 1996. Folk Beliefs and Shamanistic Traditions in Siberia. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Frazer, James. 1981. Reprint. The Golden Bough. 2 vols. New York: Random House. Original edition, 1890.
Hoppal, Mihaly. 2000. Studies on Mythology and Uralic Shamanism. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.
FOREST
See Trees
GENDER IN SHAMANISM
Gender is a set of cultural meanings pertaining to the differences and similarities between women and men as they are lived and interpreted within specific historical and geographical contexts. The social construction of gender combines an understanding of what is possible, proper, or perverse in gender-linked behavior with a set of values. It is taught, performed, and deeply enmeshed in power relations (Butler 1990).
In North America gender is primarily determined by the physical characteristics of the external genitalia. Whenever a hermaphroditic or intersexed baby is born in a hospital, physicians automatically perform surgery in order to correct the infant’s sexual ambiguity. As a result of such medical interventions, many people understand sex as signifying gender, and anatomical sex is used as a metaphor for the construction of sexual and gender identities. In this way gender identity is assumed to be biologically based and somehow “natural.” That is, someone can “feel like a woman,” or “feel like a man” (Bolin 1996).
Societies that exist outside of, or on the edges of, Western biomedical systems and monotheistic religions hold quite different views. They construct multiple nonstigmatized gender statuses for individuals by separating gender tasks and social roles from sexual morphology. Many Amerindian cultures, for example, traditionally recognized, and in some cases still recognize, four genders: woman, man, woman-man, and man-woman (Roscoe 1998). As a result, what many regard as quintessential insignias of sex in Western society have little stability either historically or comparatively when considered through the lens of gender.
Shamanism is a fluid gendered practice, a reflexive and highly contextualized discourse
Hupa female shaman, ca. 1923. (Library of Congress)
about femininity and masculinity, as well as a mutually constituting dialogue between women and men. For the Kulina of Brazil, while it is not necessary to become a shaman in order to be an adult man, only shamans—in their practice as masters of game animals as well as village protectors and leaders—achieve the full potential of maleness (Pollock 1993). Similarly, among the Yurok of northern California, while it is not necessary to become a shaman in order to be an adult woman, only shamans—in their practice as sucking doctors, midwives, and vil
lage protectors—achieve the full potential of femaleness (Buckley 1992).
Shamans within the Mazatec tradition of Mexico practice within a domestic context in the areas of human reproduction and agricultural production (Munn 1973). They search, question, untie, and disentangle all of the internal origins of human misfortune. Depending upon their training and sexual orientation, they have distinctive healing behaviors and chants. Those traveling a strongly masculine path battle with external political and social causes of illness; their words flash forth with the terrible force of thunderbolts. Shamans following a more feminine path center their practice on searching for the internal psychological causes of illness and releasing them. These gender differences have emerged in the context of family shamanism. Here spouses commonly shamanize together as a team within a family setting. Over the years children learn how to experience and talk about healing by picking up a combination of same-gender and opposite-gender symbols, rituals, and bodily responses. Although this choice is wide open, only a few boys actually end up following a purely feminine healing path and only a few girls end up following a purely masculine path. While some women work with masculine spiritual energies, or powers, most embody feminine sources of energy. Likewise males can work with either feminine or masculine powers. But the most powerful shamans of all combine parts of each of these gendered traditions.
A relationship of dominance and subordination between nation-states and the indigenous people living within these states has been symbolically constructed and analytically described along the sexual divide. Relations between men and women are often used to express power relationships. Worldwide, an educated elite consisting of either males or male-identified women rules the hegemonic state (Scott 1999). In this environment indigenous peoples and most especially their religious leaders and healers, shamans, are seen as uncivilized outsiders who might threaten the state’s authority. To control them, they are gendered “feminine” and incorporated as subordinates.
Many shamans directly confront this attempt at subordinating them. Instead of accepting a purely feminine role, they describe human beings as containing a combination of masculine
and feminine energies and aspects including possession of a female and a male soul, as well as membership in both a matriclan and a patri-clan. They often work with both masculine and feminine forms of energy, sometimes even shape-shifting into beings of the opposite gender. The gender crossing, bending, and blending of these ritual specialists during shamanic seances and other community-wide rituals enables them to manipulate potent masculine and feminine cosmic powers. Though women shamans are nurturing, they can also be brave and powerful when they help with a difficult birth or take on the warrior’s role in healing.
This flexibility of gender among shamans has important implications for understanding how gender-variant identities are contextually situated within a broader system of meanings associated with femaleness and maleness worldwide. Femininity and masculinity are not necessarily opposite ends of a single sex or gender spectrum, with women on one side, men on the other, and shamans in between. Rather femininity and masculinity are terms of an unstable difference/similarity, interlocking, though contradictory, aspects or modalities of personhood. People following shamanic paths in many societies include feminine and masculine characteristics within their performances. When individuals are initiated into these traditions, they are trained to avoid choosing, negating, or destroying either of the binary pairs. Instead, they are encouraged in an ironic manipulation of both sides of the polarity during which the contradictions rarely resolve, even dialectally, into larger wholes. Where this kind of interplay occurs, the genders are viewed as complementary rather than hierarchical.
Shamanism offers a context in which the outlines of self and other, female and male, define one another through interaction. Social identity becomes multiple, shifting, constantly being created, erased, and re-created in interaction between self and other. One can view oneself, or can oneself be viewed, as bounded and essential, boundless and contextual, or in fluid transition between these poles. And shamanic performance itself can be viewed as a type of serious play involving the tension of holding incompatible things together because they are both necessary and in some sense both true.
In Chile most Mapuche shamans are biologically female. As midwives and mothers, they
are conceived as “givers of life,” who obtain powers from the moon in order to bring fertility to land, animals, and people. Even though they identify themselves as women, they, unlike most local women, are household heads whose families perform domestic chores for them. These women shamans make their own decisions independently from their men, traveling as they please and influencing community decisions. During public rituals they use feminine integrative symbols and actions as well as masculine exorcising or warring symbols and actions. Female symbols, like women, are called on to nurture, heal the body, and integrate the self. Male symbols, like men, are called on to exorcise, defeat, and kill the outside other. Shamans in this tradition dramatically weave together these seemingly incommensurable nurturing and warrior themes, and in so doing embody multiple genders during their performance of healing (Bacigalupo 1998).
Because of this dramatic gendering, radically shifting during public performances, it has been suggested that the figure of the shaman is neither masculine nor feminine but rather a mediator between the sexes, or a “third gender” (Saladin d’Anglure 1992). Although this idea is intriguing, at least at first, it represents a static structuralist description of what is in fact an extremely fluid situation. The concept of third-gender persons was created to describe people with distinct gender identities separate from women and men. They are labeled cross-gendered because their gender and sex do not match up with the Euro-American woman/ man binary system.
It is not membership within any one gender category per se but rather the transformation of gender, or frequent gender switching, bending, blending, or reversing that is directly linked with the process of coming closer to the sacred. The theme of gender reversals and mediation frequently occurs in mythology and rituals, but the significance attached to it varies greatly, depending on the form of the reversal, the context, and the specific gender culture. Some of the most diverse variations on the theme of gender flexibility are reflected in beliefs about shamans, animal spirits, and the manipulation of their sexual organs and energies.
Messages about gender within shamanic rituals range from the enforcement of difference to the encouragement of ambiguity and the accep
tance of partial or total transformation. One code through which these messages are made manifest is transvestitism, or cross-dressing. In Siberia, during the early years of the twentieth century, shamans often wore women’s clothing during their seances, whether or not they were transgendered or what were called locally “soft men” in their everyday lives. Some male Chukchi shamans in northeastern Siberia identified with their female spirits so strongly that they dressed all of the time as women, did women’s work, and used the special language spoken only by women. Others combined male with female features or acted out a female role without cross-dressing (Bogoras 1904-1909).
Across the Bering Strait in Alaska, an Eskimo shaman by the name of Asatchq performed a birthing ritual. While someone drummed, he rubbed his belly until it swelled then, removing his pants, he knelt in the traditional birthing position and pulled blood from between his legs, followed by his shamanic icon. In Siberia Sakha shamans of both sexes are also said to have been able to give birth. Beginning at puberty, a shaman’s training entailed birthing a raven or loon, which instantly flew away. In the second year the shaman birthed a pike that swam away. And in the third and final year of training, a truly great shaman gave birth to a bear or a wolf (Balzer 1996).
Birth together with death provides key actions, symbols, and metaphors within shamanic systems, traditions, and cultures. In many societies shamans are said “to be born” or “to die” into the profession and in their subsequent practices they may assist at actual births and actual deaths. Mircea Eliade (1989) and other scholars following him have focused on illness, death, dismemberment, and skeletalization leading to rebirth as a shaman. Since men cannot physically give birth, this shamanic path, emphasizing death and culminating in rebirth, is masculine in both symbolism and practice. Among the Tukano of the Amazon basin, for example, the journey of initiation into shamanism centers on the penetration of the cosmic uterus that ends in orgasm, followed by the woman-free birth of a neophyte masculine shaman (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971). Other indigenous societies that exist outside of, or on the edges of, Western biomedical and religious cultures create multiple non-stigmatized gender statuses for individuals who do not behave ac
cording to the biological sex ascribed to them at birth. In a number of these traditions, gender is united at the highest cosmic level with the image of a dual or a co-gendered creator deity or culture hero who combines the perspective, occupation, and outward appearances of both a male and a female being.
Dual Deities and Co-Gendering
In a large number of societies the highest-ranking deities consist of a feminine-masculine pair. This singular but nevertheless bipolar dual deity is manifested as a fluid shifting cosmic ordering force permeating all areas of the universe. Among the Mixtecs of Oaxaca, Mexico, for example, there are two sets of divine couples: a creator pair as well as a younger pair, both named One Deer after their day of birth. These younger gods are an unfolding of the initial aged gods who went on to produce numerous progeny. Likewise, in ancient Nahua (Aztec) mythology the creator deity Ometeotl is not singular but dual. This deity consists of a female-male who resided at the Place of Duality (Ometeotl), located in the twelfth and thirteenth levels of the sky. They fought, breaking their dishes, and from each and every shard a new dual divinity sprang up. Another dual deity, Oxomoco and Cipatonal, created two calendars: one of 260 days that is linked to the feminine gestation cycle and a masculine agricultural calendar of 360 days with five extra days added to adjust it to the astronomical calendar. These deities and their calendars are complementary rather than hierarchical (Marcos 2000, 95-96).
In K’iche’ Mayan culture past and present, the primordial couple, Xpiyacoc and Xmucane, are believed to have performed a divinatory sortilege at the time of human creation. The two were described in the Popol Vuh, commonly considered the Mayan Bible, as a midwife and a matchmaker. In this shamanic tradition, as it is still practiced today in highland Guatemala, husbands and wives are trained together as shamans by a shaman couple. Among the central lessons they are taught is how to recognize both cosmic co-gendering and their own cogendered nature. In other words, they learn how to properly balance the feminine and masculine dimensions both within their own bodies and in the cosmos. For example, the left side
of everyone’s body is female, and the right side is male. During their training and initiation, shamans are encouraged to behave in both feminine and masculine ways, and from time to time to take on the social role of the opposite sex. After their first initiation they might also then undergo more specialized training and initiation separately in what are considered gender-exclusive healing specialties: women as midwives and men as bonesetters (Tedlock 1992).
Warao women, living in the Orinoco Delta of Venezuela, specialize in treating the nicotine seizures of their husbands and other male relatives who use large doses of tobacco as a hallucinogen (Wilbert 1972). As a result of this role they are considered to be important shamans. They cure the convulsions their male relatives suffer during shamanic seances by asking the tobacco spirits that reside in men’s chests to release them. Their healing role is modeled on the behavior of the original shamans, a married couple who on the death of the man’s parents began to fast and after eight days of smoking strong tobacco ascended together to the zenith. There they went into the House of Tobacco Smoke, where the man began to transform himself into his guardian spirit, the swallowtailed kite. While he was shape-shifting, however, he suffered a nicotine seizure and nearly died. His wife instantly transformed herself into a frigate bird; rustling her wings and blowing over his rigid body, she soothed and healed him. The tobacco spirit then gave her the job of healing seizures and initiated her as a shaman. From then on she filled the role of a shape- and gender-shifting shaman.
Here, as in many other Amazonian societies, healing is performed in terms of gender complementarities. Women specialize in treating illnesses brought on by odoriferous contagion, while men specialize in treating illnesses caused by spirit aggression and object intrusion. Once the contagions or foreign objects invade the body they expand, creating fetid gas and producing clinical symptoms affecting both the physical organs and the soul of the particular region of the body.
In the Kodi district of Suba, Indonesia, there are also many double-gendered shamanic deities. The distant, rather otiose Creator figure is referred to as the Mother Binder of the Forelock, Father Smelter of the Crown. The house
pillar deity, who controls human childbearing and health, is called Great Mother, Great Father. The clan deity who lives in the large banyan tree growing in the center of each village is Elder Mother, Ancient Father. Shamans who often cross gender boundaries during their performances address this co-gendered deity, who presides over ceremonial feasts and enforces ancestral law. Although Kodi has no permanent or semipermanent liminal figures, such as the transvestite shamans of Siberia, their healers may assume a gender-ambiguous role for a short period when it is necessary to concentrate power (Hoskins 1990).
Barbara Tedlock
See also: Costume, Shaman; Indonesian Shamanism; Mapuche Shamanism;
Mayan Shamanism; Offerings and Sacrifice in Shamanism; Priestesses of Eurasia;
Siberian Shamanism; Southeast Asian Shamanism; Transvestism in Shamanism
References and further reading:
Bacigalupo, Ana Mariella. 1998. “The Exorcising Sounds of Warfare: Shamanic Healing and the Struggle to Remain Mapuche.” Anthropology of Consciousness 9, no. 5: 123-143.
Balzer, Marjorie. 1996. “Sacred Genders in Siberia: Shamans, Bear Festivals, and Androgyny.” Pp. 164-182 in Gender Reversals and Gender Cultures. Edited by Sabria Petra Ramet. London: Routledge.
Bogoras, Waldemar. 1904-1909. The Chukchee. Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, vols. 7 and 11. Leiden and New York: Brill and Stechert.
Bolin, Anne. 1996. “Transcending and Transgendering: Male-to-Female Transsexuals, Dichotomy and Diversity.” Pp. 447-485 in Third Sex, Third Gender. Edited by Gilbert Herdt. New York: Zone Books.
Buckley, Thomas. 1992. “Yurok Doctors and the Concept of Shamanism.” Pp. 117-161 in California Indian Shamanism. Edited by Lowell John Bean. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press.
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Hoskins, Janet. 1990. “Doubling Deities, Descent, and Personhood: An Exploration of Kodi Gender Categories.” Pp. 273-306 in Power and Difference. Edited by J. M.
Atkinson and S. Errington. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Marcos, Sylvia. 2000. “Embodied Religious Thought: Gender Categories in Mesoamerica.” Pp. 93-114 in Gender/Bodies/Religions. Edited by Sylvia Marcos. Cuernavaca, Mexico: Aler Publications.
Munn, Henry. 1973. “The Mushrooms of Language.” Pp. 86-122 in Hallucinogens and Shamanism. Edited by M. J. Harner. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pollock, Donald. 1993. “Culina Shamanism: Gender, Power, and Knowledge.” Pp. 25-40 in Portals of Power: Shamanism in South America. Edited by E. Jean Langdon and Gerhard Baer. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo. 1971. Amazonian Cosmos: The Sexual and Religious Symbolism of the Tukano Indians. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Roscoe, Will. 1998. Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Saladin d’Anglure, Bernard. 1992. “La ’troisieme’ sexe.” Ethnologie 23: 836-844.
Scott, Joan. 1999. Gender and the Politics of History. New York: Columbia University Press.
Tedlock, Barbara. 1992. Time and the Highland Maya. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Wilbert, Johannes. 1972. “Tobacco and Shamanistic Ecstasy among the Warao of Venezuela.” Pp. 55-83 in Flesh of the Gods.
Edited by Peter T. Furst. New York: Praeger.
HEALING AND SHAMANISM
The question of whether shamans can heal their clients can be answered satisfactorily only if one looks carefully at the meaning of healing, and then uses the insights of postmodern philosophy to shed light on the nature of what shamans do. If healing is recognized as bounded within an experiential domain of suffering, then shamans are capable of healing their clients, providing relief from the chaos caused by illness, repairing personhood, and offering new models of meaningful identity. Shamans do not cure disease; they seek to construct a life world in which disease has lost its meaning.
Health and Healing
To heal is to restore health. If, following the 1948 charter of the World Health Organization, “health” is taken in its widest sense to mean “complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity,” then healing is rarely accomplished, no matter what type of practitioner seeks to achieve it. Shamans are no more likely than are specialists of any other medical or religious system to effect physiological, psychological, and social changes so comprehensive that any patient could ever be considered completely healed. Chronic poverty, a major cause of ill health throughout much of the world, remains untouched by most forms of medical intervention, and it is also left unaddressed by shamans. In the industrial West, death rates from all infectious diseases fell throughout the last century with no obvious contribution from medical science. As Richard Lewontin noted, “complex social changes, resulting in increases in the real earning of the great mass of people, reflected in part in their far better nutrition, . . . really lie at the basis of our in
creased longevity and our decreased death rate from infectious disease” (1991, 41). Many forms of ill health are masked by the medical-ization of their origins, which often lie not only in poverty, but also in its closely associated conditions of malnutrition, overpopulation, ecological degradation, unfair land tenure systems, institutionalized gender disparities, racism, exploitive wage labor, political oppression, and corruption. Likewise, the medicaliza-tion of symptoms may lead to situations where, for example, chronic hunger is treated with tranquilizers or vitamin injections, whose magical status lends them power no more likely to cure underlying causes than would a shaman’s intervention.
If, however, healing is taken less comprehensively, in subjective terms of whether a person, a family, or a community feels better after some specific activity or intervention is performed, then there is a circumscribed area in which the outcomes of shamanic healing can be identified. To explore this domain, it is useful to recall the distinction commonly drawn in medical anthropology between disease and illness, with its corollary distinction between curing and healing. The biomedical locus of disease as an explanatory concept is the human body, delimited by anatomy that focuses on pathology (Foucault 1994). As defined by Arthur Kleinman, disease refers to biological or psychological malfunctioning, while illness refers to the patient’s experiences and perceptions, including social responses to disease. Illness “is created by personal, social, and cultural reactions to disease,” and so has a biographical significance as well as a physiological significance (1980, 72). In this model, curing is primarily a process of clinical intervention in the pathophysiological realm applied most successfully to acute conditions such as infectious disease, and healing fo
cuses on less precise states of illness, including a wide range of psychosomatic complaints, social problems expressed in the soma, emotional problems, and undiagnosed or undifferentiated disorders. Conditions medically diagnosed as congenital, degenerative, or terminal may fail to be either cured or healed.
This model recognizes that one can have a disease without having an accompanying illness, and can also be cured of a disease without being healed of it. Although healing is often seen as secondary to curing, a more radical application of the distinction between the two suggests that a patient could be healed of an affliction without being cured: In such a case, the integrity of a patient as a social person would be restored, even if a pathological state might remain untreated in the patient’s body. It is precisely in this sense that shamans, and other religious specialists, as well as practitioners of “traditional” or “alternative” medicines, may be capable of treating diverse conditions that more rigorously scientific types of medicine do not cure. A tacit recognition of this premise underlies much popular usage of the concept healing, as the term frequently implies spiritual, miraculous, or psychic means, and may be seen as involving occult or divine forces at work, although such transcendental speculations lie beyond the scope of this essay.
Scientific Approaches to Healing
At the other end of the spectrum from supernatural explanations lie attempts to study healing scientifically. Many of these attempts focus on the placebo effect, whose precise mechanisms remain difficult to document. Place-bos—substances or procedures without specific activity for the condition being evaluated— have been found effective in producing relief from cough, headache, anxiety, hypertension, pain, and depression, among other conditions, and have also been documented to produce toxic side effects, all of which results can also, by extension, be attributed to shaman rituals. Some of these results may, however, be attributable to a reporting bias, and a recent metaanalysis (Hrobjartsson and Gotzsche 2001) has shown that in studies in which treatments are compared not just with placebos but also with no treatment at all, participants given no treatment improve at about the same rate as participants given placebos.
Nevertheless, the work that has been done to explain the success of the placebo effect may have value in promoting an understanding of the effect of shamanic healing. Howard Brody suggested a model of conditions that may be most conducive to the success of the placebo effect: (1) the patient is provided with an explanation of her illness that is consistent with her preexisting view of the world; (2) a group of individuals assuming socially sanctioned roles is available to provide emotional support for the patient; and (3) the healing intervention leads to the patient’s acquiring a sense of mastery and control over the illness (1977, 122). These three conditions are met by many forms of shamanic healing, particularly in those traditional societies that have long had well-defined roles for shamans.
Other, more biologically reductionist approaches to shamanic healing seek explanation in various neuroendocrine mechanisms. Much of this approach is based on the stimulation of pain-controlling endogenous opiates by various quasi-shamanic practices such as self-inflicted wounds or the use of psychotropic drugs. Such studies have ordinarily examined practitioners rather than patients, and most often have been based on neopractitioners, that is, practitioners who are devoid of traditional cultural contexts. In the absence of rigorous, double-blinded case-controlled trials, these hypotheses remain on or beyond the periphery of science.
Shamanic Healing
Throughout much of the world, the capacity to heal was traditionally seen as resulting either from power of office, as by priests or kings, or by a sacred commission or special gift. Both of these traditions were combined in the role of shaman, whose position within the social system of most cultures was well defined, a result of apprenticeship and rigorous training, but who nevertheless frequently claimed a special calling to the profession, often with a privileged relation to particular spirits. This relation was often manifested by suffering illnesses attributed to those spirits before agreeing to become a shaman. Anne Fadiman (1997, 21), for example, reported that Hmong epileptics often became shamans, since their seizures offered evidence of their power to perceive things other people could not see and were a means for fa
cilitating their entry into trance. Crucially, as Joan Halifax put it, “that they have been ill themselves gives them an intuitive sympathy for the suffering of others and lends them emotional credibility as healers” (1982). She explored this phenomenon in depth, drawing on the myth of the centaur Chiron, who, although greatest of healers and teacher of Aesculepius (who became the god of medicine and healing), was unable to heal himself of the wound given by Hercules’s poisoned arrow.
Shaman healing rituals traditionally rely on oral texts, chants or songs telling stories of the creation and of the relations between humans and spirits. Shamans recite myths of the origins of worldly disorder and histories of malevolent forces, stories that explain why people suffer, grow old, and die. They tell of extraordinary events and exceptional healers, list symptoms attributable to different agents of affliction, identify where those agents may be found, and explain how they may be placated. The relationship of these myths to healing was first examined by Claude Levi-Strauss in his 1949 article “The Effectiveness of Symbols,” (Levi-Strauss, 1963), in which he drew specific parallels with the process of abreaction in Freudian psychoanalysis. Levi-Strauss concluded that by a shaman’s recital, “conflicts and resistances are resolved . . . because this knowledge makes possible a specific experience, in the course of which conflicts materialize in an order and on a level permitting their free development and leading to their resolution” (198). This helps to explain why so many healing rituals of shamans involve symbolic activities, such as gestures of binding, burying, sucking, or blowing.
Healing rituals personally observed by the author in Nepal (Maskarinec 1995) often illustrated the activities of repairing or postponing fate and setting up barriers to protect the patient. Two of these rituals incorporated explicit acts of raising the patient heavenward, in cases in which astrological difficulties needed repair. In one, the shaman moved the patient’s foot step by step up a small model of a pole ladder. In the second, relatives and neighbors lifted the patient as she crouched atop winnowing trays. To reinforce the sense that the patient was being conveyed into the heavens, the shaman might suspend models of the sun and moon from the roof beam, along with a plant shoot.
The patient was lifted up to them. Once elevated, the patient bit the plant shoot. The recital took the form of a dialogue between the shaman and the patient, with the shaman speaking both parts:
“Did you eat the green fodder, the cold water?” “Ate it!”
“Did you see the nine suns, the nine moons?”
“Saw them!”
“Did you cross the seven difficult passes, the seven crevasses?”
“Crossed them!”
“If you go to the sky, I’ll pull you back by your feet!
“If you go to deep earth, I’ll pull you back by your top-knot!” (Maskarinec)
Moving the patient physically is paralleled symbolically by soul retrieval rituals, common in many shamanic practices. When a patient’s vital forces have been fragmented, they may need to be recalled, or, if they are recalcitrant, shamans may need to search for them. Retrieving lost souls is the symbolic converse of healing by extraction, in which shamans “remove” quasi-physical objects from their patients, things that have been inserted by witches or other malevolent forces. Shamans may also work as exorcists, casting out spirits that adversely affect their clients, including, on occasion, ones that they have themselves dispatched, as shamans recognize that if they can heal, they can also cause illness. For example, Nepali shamans may dispatch the souls of the dead to drum up business:
Wake up, dead souls, those who died at the right time, wake up!
Those who died at the wrong time, deceased dead souls, wake up!
Wake up, dead souls, wake up!
Go to the east, go to the west!
Go to the north, go to the south!
You, go in the middle of the night, entering towns, whoever you fancy, strike!
Go, dead souls, go! (Maskarinec 1998, 349)
Shamanic healing often acknowledges the claims of the person who is seen as causing the illness, illness becoming an index of social relationships. Some sources, such as dead ancestors, may need to be placated and bribed; still
others, such as witches or other shamans, must be threatened and punished. Negotiating on a patient’s behalf with dead relatives who remain troubled by unresolved family issues and social dilemmas is another form of shamanic intervention (Vitebsky 1993), one in which the social aspects of shamanic healing are made clear, particularly its useful contribution toward healing grieving.
Discourse and Language
As Levi-Strauss also observed, “physical integrity cannot withstand the dissolution of the social personality,” opening an additional explanation for shamanic healing; it can be seen as a form of logotherapy, a therapy that works by restoring meaning, originally developed by Viktor Frankl. It uses cosmogony to recreate a meaningful world, reintegrating the patient with her society. Creation myths frequently play significant roles in shaman healing rituals, the words not only giving shape and purpose to the rituals, but fundamentally establishing new orders in the world. Reversing a psychoanalytic observation of Julia Kristeva (1989, 11), one can say that the discourse itself forms and transforms the subject. The discourse of cosmological knowledge is communicated to the shaman through his spiritual connections when he is in trance, as though he were truly an “other,” thus converting him into a specialist who can actively intervene in the world by taking responsibility for it. A shaman affirms by his recitations not only his mastery of esoteric material but also of the topics—the spirits and their properties as healing or harming agents— that it contains. This cosmological and theoretical knowledge is shared with the audience, giving them hope of possible relief from misfortune.
Through a dialectic of unity and difference, of fragmentation and integration, shamans reconstruct an orderly world, connecting cosmology with healthy social relations and personal well-being. Shamans replace the chaotic, unbalanced, inexpressible suffering of a patient with orderly, balanced, grammatical, and eloquently expressible states. Reading the Golden Bough, Wittgenstein noted, “In magical healing one indicates to an illness that it should leave the patient.” (1979, 6e; italics in original) A shaman does more. With her words, which are her
power and her tools, she creates both the illness and the disease, creates the body of the patient, and creates the world in which her patient experiences relief. A shaman’s language does not attempt to describe how things are. It determines how the world will be. Words shape and give substance to the accidents of the external world. The right words create the world anew, curing the victims of a stale, deteriorated world; healing is thus an aesthetic endeavor. A shaman, to heal, battles entropy, resisting the inevitable accelerating descent of the world into chaos.
Ritual language, with its powerful figures of speech, creates maps for transforming reality; Ruth Murray Underhill noted for the Papagos, “The describing of a desired event in the magic of beautiful speech was to them the means by which to make that event take place” (1938, 6). Gary Witherspoon noted the same for Navajo theories of language: “The symbol was not created as a means of representing reality; on the contrary, reality was created or transformed as a manifestation of symbolic form. In the Navajo view of the world, language is not a mirror of reality; reality is a mirror of language” (1977, 34). Shaman texts are structured presentations of life, not representations of life or references to it; their recitations are ideal dramas that open for intervention the shapes and boundaries of the human condition. A shaman healing text, like a musical composition, cannot represent anything other than itself, and nothing can improve on the power of the words themselves. Concentrated at the shape-giving boundaries of action, healing texts embrace an aesthetic of completion, integration, purity, and balance, reshaping the imbalances and fragmentation that characterize illness (Desjar-lais 1992).
Hegel may have been talking about the same phenomenon when he said “sound releases the Ideal from its entanglement in matter” (Hegel 1975, 88). The metaphysical understanding behind Hegel’s words, however, is very different from the shamanic worldview. If one were to accept, as Hegel plainly did, Plato’s metaphysical premise that language represents things in a primary world, the world of the Ideal, and that tropes—a further remove from that reality— are just “figures of speech,” then shamanic healing is an irrelevancy. Shamans implicitly deny this fundamental principle of Western metaphysics, rejecting Plato’s transcendental signi
fied beneath the world of daily life. Shamans use language to constitute reality, not to denote or to imitate it. Shamanic language is not a mirror of the world, not even of an ideal world, but a set of technical devices to give form to a new world, an experiential life world in which the words of a correctly recited formula will alleviate corporal suffering, because they give form to pain, to the sufferer, to the cause of the pain, to the entire world in which the sufferer experiences pain. Instead of a denotative theory of language in which words signify the world, shamanic speech presupposes a generative theory of words creating the world, and therefore posits that healing is not just a possibility, but a necessity in order to create a world.
The Sacrifice
Every shamanic healing ritual concludes with either a sacrifice, usually a blood offering, demanded by the familiar spirits with which shamans work, or minimally a temporary substitute postponing that offering. Acknowledging the violence of illness as a disruption of order, the new reality constructed by the shaman must be cemented by a parallel act of violence, perhaps reflecting an intuition similar to that of Jacques Lacan, that violence “is situated at the root of formalization” (Nakazawa 1986, 122; Lacan 1968). These words conclude one shaman healing text:
For my patient, I have provided complete protection,
I have provided safety, I have provided protection,
I’ve distanced the crises, distanced the obstructions,
life joined to life, breath joined to breath, blood joined to blood, flesh joined to flesh, body joined to body, breath joined to breath.
(Maskarinec, forthcoming)
The sacrifice completes the negotiations with those unseen forces who have been blamed for the illness, whether witches, dead humans, or spirits of various types. It compels those forces to acknowledge the shaman’s power over life and death. Therapeutically, the sacrificed animal’s flesh and blood not only provide a substitute for those of the patient, they concretely bridge the space opened between myth and re
ality, reuniting the unseen with the present and offering tangible social evidence that shamans continue to have meaningful power over this world of suffering.
Gregory G. Maskarinec
See also: African Traditional Medicine; American Indian Medicine Societies; Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Shamans; Ethnocentrism and Shamanism; Extraction; Hmong Shamanism; Huichol Shamanism; Hypnosis and Shamanism; Igbo Shamanism; “Magic,” Power, and Ritual in Shamanism; Mayan Shamanism; Nepalese Shamans; Neuropsychology of Shamanism; Psychology of Shamanism
References and further reading:
Brody, Howard. 1977. Placebos and the Philosophy of Medicine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Desjarlais, Robert R. 1992. Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Fadiman, Anne. 1997. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Favret-Saada, Jeanne. 1980. Deadly Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage. Translated from the French by Catherine Cullen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Originally published as Les mots, la mort, les sorts, 1977.
Foucault, Michel. 1994. Reprint. The Birth of the Clinic. An Archaeology of Medical Perception. Translated from the French by A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Vintage Books. Original edition in English, 1973, New York: Pantheon. Originally published as Naissance de la clinique. Une archeologie du regard medical, 1963.
Halifax, Joan. 1982. Shaman: The Wounded Healer. New York: Crossroads.
Hegel, G. W. F. 1975. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Translated from the German by T. M. Knox, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Originally published 1835.
Hrobjartsson, Asbjorn, and Peter C. Gotzsche. 2001. “Is the Placebo Powerless? An Analysis of Clinical Trials Comparing Placebo with No Treatment.” New England Journal of Medicine 344, no. 21: 1594-1602.
Kleinman, Arthur. 1980. Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kristeva, Julia. 1989. Language: The Unknown. Translated from the French by Anne M. Menke. New York: Columbia University Press. Originally published as Le langue, cet inconnu, 1981.
Lacan, Jacques. 1968. The Language of the Self. Translated from the French by Alan Sheridan. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Originally published as Fonction et champ de la parole et du langue en psychanalyse, 1956.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. “The Effectiveness of Symbols.” Pp. 186—206 in Structural Anthropology. Translated from the French by C. Jacobson and B. G. Schoepf. New York: Basic Books. Originally published in 1949.
Lewontin, Richard. 1991. Biology as Ideology. New York: Harper Collins.
Maskarinec, Gregory. 1995. The Rulings of the Night: An Ethnography of Nepalese Shaman Oral Texts. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
———. 1998. Nepalese Shaman Oral Texts. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
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Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Nakazawa, Shinichi. 1986. “The Zero Logic of Disease—A Critique of Violence.” Monumenta Serindica (Anthropological and Linguistic Studies of the Kathmandu Valley and the Gandaki Area in Nepal. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa) 15: 117—166.
Oppitz, Michael. 1993. “Wie heilt der Heiler? Schamanische Praxis im Himalaya.
Pyschotherapie” [How Does the Healer Heal? Shamanic Practice in the Himalayas.
Psychotherapy]. Psychosomatik Medizische Psychologie 43: 387-395.
Spiro, Howard. 1998. The Power of Hope. New Haven: Yale University Press.
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Vitebsky, Piers. 1993. Dialogues with the Dead: The Discussion of Mortality among the Sora of Eastern India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1979. Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough. Retford, UK: Brymill Press.
HISTORY OF THE STUDY OF SHAMANISM
Studies on shamanism as a scholarly concept date back to the late nineteenth century, when this neologism came into current use. The word shaman, used for a type of religious specialist first encountered among the Tungus of Siberia, had been progressively extended to similar specialists all over the world, starting in the mid-nineteenth century (Mikhailowski 1894).
However, sources on Tungus and other Siberian forms of shamanism go back to long before that time: to the account of his exile in Siberia by the Russian archbishop Avvakum (1672-1675) (Narby and Huxley 2001, 1820). Travel accounts written by western Europeans in the eighteenth century introduced this word to literature, but the understanding of the word shaman remained confined to intellectual circles in Europe and Siberian specialists. The first two accounts were written in German (Is-brants Ides, ambassador of Russia to China, 1692-1695, translated into French in 1699, and English in 1706), and in Dutch (Nicolas Witsen, 1692). Their choice of the term shaman from among other Siberian terms for this figure resulted in making the term standard and Tungus shamanism paradigmatic. Its extension and recognition by early ethnographers as a legitimate term—more than one century later—to define similar ritualists encountered in other parts of the world was mainly due to its being a native term from the language of a shamanic society.
The term shaman came to be used liberally in literature to replace a series of European terms deemed unsatisfactory (sorcerer, diviner, healer, magician, juggler, and the like). It was used with no reference to a well-established definition and rather served as a term that could be all-encompassing: A shaman could be both sorcerer and healer, with no contradiction
between these two activities. Similarly, the term shamanism came into use without being delineated as a particular scholarly concept nor associated with definite methods. It was designed to support the term shaman as a general scholarly concept and enjoyed the same extension. Nowadays both terms are used to refer retrospectively to a still wider range of cases, which were given other names before.
Throughout the three-century-long history of scholarship in the area, shamanism has been approached by academic disciplines as different as the history of religion, psychology, medicine, art, and, more recently, anthropology. It has also been the topic of many kinds of more or less extrascientific approaches, for it is a matter where subjective considerations are apt to interfere. The very fact that it has become an object of popular interest in the framework of Western countercultural movements since the 1960s has entailed a large variety of uses of the word far beyond the boundaries of usual applications and specialized studies. On the whole, shamanism has given rise to an enormous amount of writing.
Several trends can be distinguished, at some risk of simplification. Debates have focused mainly on the extent to which shamanism should be seen as a religion (and thus a sociocultural institution) and the extent to which it should be understood as an inherent human property, to be understood in terms of the field of psychology. These two approaches appear to be derived from Western ideological positions, which have led to a full range of divergent valuations in the course of time. In what follows, names and dates are given for the most significant contributions, whether or not those works have been listed in the already lengthy References.
A Cultural Phenomenon:
Devilish, Backward, Romantic
The first trend is the one taken up by missionaries and a majority of early travelers who all, as Western people, looked at shamans with Christian eyes. They acknowledged the shaman as a religious character, but in the devil’s service and not in God’s. As evidence for this conclusion they brought forward the “wild and extravagant”, animal-like attire and behavior of shamans during their rituals and their claims to
foretell and influence the future—an offense to God’s will. Such arguments were used late into the nineteenth century to convert shamanistic peoples to Christianity, in order to further the process of their integration into the Russian Empire.
Another view emerged in the eighteenth century under the influence of Enlightenment ideas: Far from coming within the realm of religion, shamans were seen as quacks who make use of their fellows’ gullibility. While competing as an interpretation with the religious one, this view led to similar conclusions. In their comments from a distance, rationalist philosophers argued that shamanism was to be eradicated, if not in the name of monotheist transcendence against the devil, then in the name of reason against obscurantism, of culture against nature. In all respects shamanism was seen as potentially subversive and a hindrance to the progress of humankind. On one hand, this trend encouraged explorers to stay in the field for long periods of time and to carry out the most accurate and wide-ranging observations possible, which produced a large set of excellent descriptions (such as those of D. G. Messerschmidt, describing his travels 1720—1727; J. G. Gmelin, travels 1733-1744, published 1751-1752; John Bell 1763; S. Krasheninnikov 1764; J. G. Georgi 1776-1780; Pallas 1776). On the other hand, it led some of them (especially Gmelin) to focus on unmasking the shamans’ presumably misleading tricks—which, of course, made both shamans and their audiences suspicious of foreigners and led to many shamans choosing to practice in secret.
Then, in the context of the romantic reaction against the Enlightenment, other philosophers (mainly the German Johann Gottfried Herder) praised shamans as “noble savages,” and exalted their magic art. Gloria Flaherty (1992) brought this trend to light by gathering favorable comments on shamanism (mostly called by other names) from writings by the French philosopher Denis Diderot, Herder, the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others. At that time, their ideas remained confined to urban intellectual circles and were rarely featured in firsthand descriptions. Only a few Russian fieldworkers, belonging to the group of Siberian regionalists under the leadership of G. N. Potanin, expressed romantic views in their records. (See Narby and Huxley
2001 for documents from many of these observers and philosophers.)
A Psychological Phenomenon
A majority of field observers—mainly scientists and administrators following the colonization process—were rather inclined to reflect realities in their records. These testified to changes in shamanic practice under the impact of and as a reaction to colonization: Nervous and mental troubles increased, and so did rites to heal them. In addition to their usual healing function, healing rites also developed as a means of symbolic protection of traditional life at both individual and collective levels: They were better tolerated than all other traditional rituals by colonial authorities who were eager to spread their own law and faith. As a consequence, more and more individuals resorted to “shamanizing” for themselves. Be that as it may, this context gave rise to a full range of psychological approaches to shamanism.
Thus, the study of shamans and shamanism passed from the realm of religion to that of psychology as it was becoming widely used in the late nineteenth century. One reason was that sociology did not characterize shamanism as a religion, since it is marked by a highly personalized practice with neither clergy nor doctrine: What exists is only “a certain kind of people filling religious and social functions” (Van Gennep 1903, 51). In addition, shamanism is often found mixed with popular practices attached to world religions (Aigle, Brac de la Perriere, and Chaumeil 2000), so that such questions arose as, “Does shamanism fit any type of belief or is it independent of any belief?” The other reason lay in the fact that this failure of sociology to classify shamanism as a religion fitted in with field observers’ statements about the therapeutic function of shamanism on the one hand and with the growing influence of psychoanalysis on the other hand. Under the influence of the latter, debates about “the certain kind of people,” as Van Gennep described them, calmed down: Far from being heroic or charismatic, shamanizing was declared psychopatho-logical. The healing power of shamanic rites was therefore seen as intended for the shamans themselves as well as for the audience.
This interpretation predominated throughout the first half of the twentieth century, in
the field and elsewhere. The work of Waldemar Bogoras (1904—1910), popularized by Marie Antoinette Czaplicka (1914), established a connection between shamanism and “arctic hysteria” on the basis of external similarities— a trend that culminated with Ake Ohlmarks (1939), who classified types of shamanism according to the degree of shamans’ psychopathology. A majority of scholars then adopted a similar position, whatever the cultural area concerned (Ackerknecht 1943), with a few of them retracting afterwards, while still focusing on the shaman’s personality as the source for shamanic behavior (Kroeber 1940). The most extreme position was that put forward by George Devereux (1961), who branded the shaman “a severe neurotic or psychotic,” who is never cured but whose contact with the supernatural world provides him with continual self-therapy. Discussions about the shaman’s personality and mental state during ritual continued far into the 1970s and 1980s, mainly in the United States (Silverman 1967; Bourguignon 1973; Hippler 1976; Noll 1983)—without mainstream psychology ever taking them up. As early as 1935, however, Sergei Shirokogoroff had emphasized in his famous Psychomental Complex of the Tungus that shamans must be physically and mentally strong to cope with their duties, although there were also weak personalities among those he met.
It is worth stressing that, in the middle of the twentieth century and later, anthropologists deserted the debate on the shamans’ psychology. A majority of them pursued monographic field studies more or less based on the idea that shamanism is an all-inclusive system in each society (Lewis 2003). But others declared the concept of shamanism irrelevant and useless (Geertz 1966; Taussig 1987).
Idealization and Universalization
At the same time, however, shamanism started to become popular with the general public. It was still assigned to the sphere of psychology and seen as a matter of individual subjectivity, but approaches took a new turn in the frame of a complex trend that emerged from the counterculture movement born in the early 1960s in California. This trend eventually came to idealize shamanism and in fact recreate it. Several
factors played a role in this reversal of values. In the first place, two writers, whose work intellectual and artistic circles extolled, had an important influence. In works of ethnographic fiction, Carlos Castaneda exalted the use of hallucinogens by sorcerers as a source for enriching spiritual life, which contributed to interesting members of the drug culture in shamanism (Furst 1972; Harner 1973).
Then, the English translation of the most famous book ever written on shamanism, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (1964), published by Mircea Eliade in French in 1951, enhanced interest in the use of shamanism as part of personal spirituality by offering a “purer” model of shamanism, free from any psychotropic conditioning, primary in all respects. This book attempted to reconcile religious and psychological views of shamanism: It was the shaman’s success at curing himself that enabled him to heal other people, and his “ecstasy” (understood as a kind of journey to heaven) is the religious experience par excellence. The word “ecstasy”—perceived as direct contact with the Divine—made the idea attractive to those Christians who were contesting what they saw as a too strict clerical hierarchy at that time.
Eliade’s book was also a mystical essay, in which shamanism was understood as potentially universal (in the line of Jung and Campbell) and in fact elitist. Eliade saw the shaman, in addition to being a rebel against all kinds of established powers, as a forerunner of a full range of creative or innovative specialties—a return to romanticist views. Alice Kehoe (1996) criticized, under the ascription of “primitivism,” such an idealization of shamanism by Eliade and one of his best-known followers, Ake Hultkrantz. Be that as it may, the view ascribing “the beginnings of art” to shamanism, first expressed by Andreas Lommel (1967), valid for all kinds of art (for theater, according to Schechner 1976), has been widespread up to the present in general public and artistic circles. It is worth emphasizing that it has been the popular success of Eliade’s book that has gradually imposed it as a reference on anyone who writes on shamanism. It is seen both as an impressive scholarly work and as one contested because of its weak scientific value (distortion of data, comparison between elements taken out of context and not based on actual field
work by the author, and the like). It is translated into many non-European languages and popular in formerly shamanistic societies.
Interest in shamanism has developed in several directions, marked by postmodernist thinking and the New Age trend. It has given rise to Western forms of Neo-Shamanism, the most influential of which was founded in 1985 by Michael Harner in California: the Center, then Foundation, for Shamanic Studies. It is meant to spread Core Shamanism, a creation of Harner from common elements of various shamanic traditions, therefore supposed to be universal and accessible to Westerners. The message is intended for everybody: There is a spirit world or “nonordinary” reality that can be accessed through the “shamanic state of con-sciousness”—Harner’s designation of what others call an “altered,” “alternate,” or “modified” state of consciousness, which corresponds to Eliade’s “ecstasy” or “trance.” Core shamanism proclaims itself as leaderless. It has been introduced in the form of fee-paying courses in urban areas, in Europe and in the United States, as well as in formerly shamanist societies in the Americas, Asia, and Russia (Funk and Kharitonova 1999; Townsend 2001; a depiction of the training by a trainee is given in Jakobsen 1999). The definition of shamanism in terms of a state of consciousness encourages the idea that shamanism is universal, ahistoric, and culture-free. To supporters of this view, shamanism may be found everywhere and at all times, in modern cities as well as in prehistoric rock art (Clottes and Lewis-Williams 1998; comments in Francfort and Hamayon 2002) or in Celtic culture (Noel 1997; Jones 1998). It epitomizes primordial spirituality, including in the first place that of the West.
References to shamanism have diversified in the last two decades of the twentieth century, more often in the shape of limited individual initiatives than in an organized framework, and are marked by the disappearance of the shaman’s figure as a common feature. Initially focused on therapy, practices may evolve towards performing arts, expected to put body and soul in harmony (Kim and Hoppal 1995). Ideas may evolve towards “deep” or “spiritual ecology,” based on the sense of nature and the general “interconnectedness” inherent in shamanism (Stuckrad 2002). Other purposes emerge: musical innovation (Howard 2002);
“mystic or ecstatic tourism,” based on the notion of “experiential” shamanism (advertising abounds in the journal Shaman’s Drum); acquisition of “powers” or tools of “conscious business,” “leadership coaching,” and so on. As to financial objectives, although they are now widespread in Asiatic neoshamanic practices, they seem to have only recently emerged in the West, as suggested by Merete Demant Jakob-sen, quoting from a leaflet: “Shamanic Finance is: Integrating Money with Spirit” (1999, 203).
Most of the approaches born during the last three decades have the effect of making practice interfere with scholarly study and abolishes the distance of the researcher from the object of research required by classical scientific approaches. Moreover, the present disparity of understandings deters any attempt at a general theory of shamanism.
Roberte Hamayon
See also: Core Shamanism and Neo
Shamanism; Ethnocentrism and Shamanism; Neo-Shamanism in Germany; Paganism in Europe; Psychology of Shamanism;
Psychopathology and Shamanism; Visions and Imagery: Western Perspectives
References and further reading:
Ackerknecht, E. H. 1943. “Psychopathology, Primitive Medicine and Primitive Culture.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 14: 30—67.
Aigle, Denise, B. Brac de la Perriere, and
J.-P. Chaumeil, eds. 2000. La Politique des esprits: Chamanismes et religions universalistes. Nanterre: Societe d’ethnologie.
Atkinson, Jane Monnig. 1992. “Shamanisms today.” Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 307-330.
Bourguignon, Erika, ed. 1973. Religion, Altered States of Consciousness and Social Change. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Clottes, Jean, and David Lewis-Williams. 1998. The Shamans of Prehistory. Translated from the French by Sophie Hawkes. New York: Abrams. Original French publication, Editions du Seuil 1996.
Devereux, George. 1961. “Shamans as Neurotics.” American Anthropologist 63, no. 5: 1088-1093.
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London:
Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Flaherty, Gloria. 1992. Shamanism and the Eighteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Francfort, Henri-Paul, and Roberte Hamayon, eds., with the collaboration of Paul Bahn. 2002. The Concept of Shamanism: Uses and Abuses. Bibliotheca Shamanistica 10.
Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.
Funk, D., and V. Kharitonova, eds. 1999. Proceedings of the International Congress: Shamanism and Other Indigenous Spiritual Beliefs and Practices. Ethnological Studies of Shamanism and Other Indigenous Spiritual Beliefs and Practices, vol. 5. Moscow: Institut etnologii i antropologii, RAN (Russian Academy of Sciences).
Furst, Peter T. ed. 1972. The Flesh of the Gods: The Ritual Use of Hallucinogens. New York: Praeger.
Geertz, Clifford. 1966. “Religion as a Cultural System. Pp. 1-46 in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion. Edited by M. Banton. London: Tavistock.
Hamayon, Roberte. 1998. “Ecstasy or the West-Dreamt Shaman.” Pp. 175-187 in Tribal Epistemologies. Edited by Helmut Wautischer. Averbury Series in Philosophy. Aldershot, Brookfield: Ashgate.
Harner, Michael, ed. 1973. Hallucinogens and Shamanism. London: Oxford University Press.
Hippler, A. E. 1976. “Shamans, Curers and Personality: Suggestions toward a Theoretical Model.” In Culture—Bound Syndromes, Ethnopsychiatry and Alternative Therapies. Edited by W. Lebra. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.
Hoppal, Mihaly, and Otto von Sadovsky, eds. 1989. Shamanism, Past and Present. Budapest, Fullerton, Los Angeles: Istor books.
Howard, Keith. 2002. “Shaman Music, Drumming, and Into the ’New Age.’” Shaman 10, nos. 1 and 2: 59-81.
Hultkrantz, Ake. 1973. “A Definition of Shamanism.” Temenos 9: 25-37.
Humphrey, Caroline, N. Thomas, and
C. Humphrey, eds. 1993. Shamanism, History and the State. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Jakobsen, Merete Demant. 1999. Shamanism. Traditional and Contemporary Approaches to
the Mystery of Spirits and Healing. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Jones, Leslie Ellen. 1998. Druid, Shaman, Priest: Metaphors of Celtic Paganism. Enfield: Hisarlik.
Kehoe, Alice. 1996. “Eliade and Hultkrantz. The European Primitivism Tradition.” American Indian Quarterly 20, nos. 3—4: 377-392.
Kim, Tae-gon, and Mihaly Hoppal, eds. 1995. Shamanism in Performing Arts. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.
Kroeber, Alfred Louis. 1940. “Psychotic Factors in Shamanism.” Character and Personality 8: 204-215.
Lewis, Ioan M. 2003. Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession. 3d ed. London: Routledge. Originally published, Baltimore: Schapera Penguin, 1971.
Lommel, Andreas. 1967. Shamanism: The Beginnings of Art. Trans. from German. New York, Toronto: McGraw-Hill. Originally published 1965.
Mikhailowski, V. M. 1894. “Shamanism in Siberia and European Russia.” Trans. from Russian. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society of Great Britain and Ireland 24: 62-100. Originally published 1892: Vol. 1: 126-158.
Mitrani, Philippe. 1992. “A Critical Overview of the Psychiatric Approaches to Shamanism.” Diogenes 158: 145-164. Originally published 1982.
Narby, Jeremy, and Francis Huxley. 2001. Shamans through Time. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.
Noel, Daniel C. 1997. The Soul of Shamanism: Western Fantasies, Imaginal Realities. New York: Continuum.
Noll, Richard. 1983. “Shamanism and Schizophrenia.” American Anthropologist 10: 443-461.
Ohlmarks, Ake. 1939. Studien zum Problem des Schamanismus [Studies on the Problem of Shamanism]. Copenhagen: Lund.
Schechner, Richard. 1976. “From Ritual to Theater and Back.” Pp. 196-222 in Ritual, Play and Performance. Edited by R. Schechner. New York: Seabury Press.
Shaman. An International Journal for Shamanistic Research. Szeged: Molnar and Kelemen Oriental Publishers. Started 1993.
Shaman’s Drum. A Journal of Experiential Shamanism and Spiritual Healing. Quarterly, since 1985. Ashland, OR: Cross-Cultural Shamanism Network.
Silverman, J. 1967. “Shamans and Acute Schizophrenia.” American Anthropologist 69: 21-31.
Stuckrad, Kocku von. 2002. “Reenchanting Nature: Modern Western Shamanism and Nineteenth-Century Thought.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 70, no. 4: 771-799.
Taussig, Michael. 1987. Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Townsend, Joan B. 2001. “Modern Non-Traditional and Invented Shamanism.” Pp. 257-264 in Shamanhood, Symbolism and Epic. Edited by Juha Pentikainen. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.
Van Gennep, Arnold. 1903. “De l’emploi du mot ’chamanisme.’” Revue de l’histoire des religions 47: 51-57.
HORSES
Horses are used in shamanism as totems, spirit guides, and medicine. The power of the horse is its tireless ability to cover long distances, a trait that was probably envied by our prehistoric ancestors, who also had to journey for miles in order to survive. Horses were also a source of meat, and there is a tendency among primordial people to view animals that provide essential protein with reverence. Cave paintings of primitive horses certainly depict the fatness of horses as a quality worth recording for posterity.
In prehistoric times, shamans probably practiced propitiation rituals designed to appease the spirits of animals needed for survival. Horses were originally game animals, whose spirits had to return in the form of new horses to continue being available for hunting and eating. As the human relationship to the horse changed, the symbolic meanings ascribed to the horse changed as well.
Horses are domesticated animals and have been helpers to humankind for millennia, par
ticularly as a means of transportation. As a result, the concept of travel, especially for preindustrial societies, is strongly associated with horses. This association with travel is reflected in the symbolic horse in cultures that practice shamanism. Because the shaman enters into a trance state and is believed to travel to other worlds, an ally that can assist in these often perilous journeys is valued.
Horses have figured prominently in many cultures’ mythologies. The sun god’s chariot in Hindu and Greek mythology is pulled across the sky by teams of fiery horses. Pegasus of the Greeks, Sleipnir of ancient Nordic culture, Mohammed’s horse Alborak, and many others reflect the mystical connotations associated with horses. The winged horse symbolized the ability to fly into heaven, or to the Underworld, and horses with multiple sets of legs mirrored the number of pallbearers’ legs as they carried the coffin to the grave. Shamanic concepts of the horse reflected these cultural beliefs.
Horses carry connotations of freedom and independence, as well as devotion. Not only is the domesticated horse used to preserve the integrity of the family farm and take the traveler safely on long journeys, the horse is also capable of surviving alone in the wild. Because a horse can live without the support of human beings, the fact that horses allow themselves to be used as beasts of burden is often seen as an act of loyalty. Small wonder that many nomadic Arabic cultures kept their horses in the tent with the rest of the family.
Sacrifice of a horse is an enormous offering due to its value. Horses were sacrificed both literally and symbolically in association with many shamanic rituals. The Buryat consecrated the horse stick used in shamanic ceremonies with the blood of sacrificed animals during shamanic initiations. This practice was believed to make the horse stick “real.” The Buryats also sacrificed horses themselves, placing the horse skin and skull on a tall pole as an offering of propitiation to the deities. Other Siberian groups, such as the Yakut, had similar practices. The Altaian shaman both sacrificed the horse and conducted the slain animal’s soul to God. Horse sacrifice was practiced in Vedic India to enable the shaman to achieve direct contact with Bai Ulgan or another god.
The association of horses with flight relates to the concept of shamanic journeying, initiatory
experiences, and movement through ecstatic states of consciousness. This makes the horse the perfect companion for shamanic work. Many of the objects and symbols used in shamanic practices are referred to as the shaman’s “horse.” The rune Eh in Sami culture, which resembles the letter M in the English alphabet, is called the shaman’s horse because the shaman can “ride” it into the other worlds. Drums, or the beat of drums, are described as the shaman’s horse as well for the same reason— the beat conveys the shaman safely through the Otherworld. The Buryat horse stick becomes a real horse in nonordinary reality that is ridden as part of the shaman’s ecstatic journey.
Mongolian shamans conceive of personal psychic energy as a windhorse, and this aspect of self is developed through balanced living and religious practices. Destructive actions and bad thoughts deplete windhorse, making the concept similar to Tibetan Buddhists’ idea of karma. The Buryat also believe that reincarnating ami souls (body souls) are sent out on spirit horses to inhabit the newborn by the goddess Umai.
The result of humanity’s long time admiration of horses and dependence on them for work, transportation, and artistic inspiration is the horse’s appearance as both symbol and magical agent in shamanic practices throughout the world.
Trisha Lepp
See also: Animal Symbolism (Asia); Buryat Shamanism; Drumming in Shamanistic Rituals; Sakha Shamanism; Siberian Shamanism
References and further reading:
Andrews, Ted. 2001. Animal Speak: The Spiritual and Magical Powers of Creatures Great and Small. Saint Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications.
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Sarangerel (Stewart, Julie Ann). 2000. Riding Windhorses: A Journey into the Heart of Mongolian Shamanism. Rochester, VT: Destiny Books.
Walker, Barbara. 1988. The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects. San Francisco: Harper and Row.
HYPNOSIS AND SHAMANISM
Hypnosis and hypnotic phenomena are integral aspects of certain shamanic practices. The use of hypnotic methods can be identified in ancient shamanistic traditions from around the world, long before hypnosis was formally introduced into modern Western society (e.g., Teitelbaum 1978; Bowers 1976). This close relationship between shamanism and hypnosis can be clearly observed in at least two areas of the shamanic complex. First, both shamanism in its healing rituals and hypnosis in its therapeutic encounter rely essentially on the skillful manipulation of the patient’s imagination in order to achieve the desired therapeutic benefits. Accordingly, shamanic healing and clinical hypnosis can be jointly defined as the “masterful presentation of ideas [by the hypnotist or shaman] in order to manipulate images in the subject or client, all for the purpose of causing deliberate physiological and/or psychological responses to take place” (Overton 1998, 167). The second aspect shared by both shamanism and hypnosis is the representative use of the same dissociative state of consciousness, which in shamanism is referred to as the shamanic journey, or ecstatic flight, and in hypnosis is called the hypnotic trance, or simply trance. Neurophysiological and empirical evidence support the view that the shamanic journey achieved without the use of hallucinogenic substances, that is, with the aid of musical instrumentation, chanting, and similar phenomena, elicits the same electroencephalographic profile as the hypnotic trance state. In addition, experiential phenomena characteristic of the shaman’s ecstatic flight, such as shapeshifting, contact with imaginal agents, and the like, can likewise be achieved in hypnotic trance (see Overton 1998, 2000).
The role of trance and imagination in hypnosis is not always self-evident from the definitions of hypnosis that have been given, which vary greatly. Hypnosis has been defined as “any effective communication” (Grinder and Ban-dler 1981, 2), “a state of mind in which suggestions are acted upon much more powerfully than is possible under normal circumstances” (Alman and Lambrou 1990, 7), and “ideas evoking responses” (Bierman 1995, 65). Each of these definitions illustrates differing views on the relationship between hypnosis and trance,
an association that is often not clearly understood, although the latter is frequently implicitly viewed as equivalent to the former. However, although the use of trance with patients is central to the manner in which hypnotherapy is currently practiced, this was not always the case, nor do all practitioners understand it to be an essential element.
From its initial stages to its present-day usage, hypnosis in the West has undergone a series of identifiable transformations in its development. These transformations reveal the relationship between hypnosis and trance, the role that imagination plays in the therapeutic process, and some key intrinsic aspects of hypnosis that pertain to its relationship with shamanism. In the West, hypnosis, or mesmerism, as it was once called, can be directly traced to Anton Mesmer, who in 1776 promoted the idea that a general magnetic fluid pervaded all of nature, including living organisms, and that disease resulted when this magnetic fluid was unevenly distributed within the body. The proximity of a magnetized substance was employed to reestablish the flow of magnetic fluid in the body and therefore restore the organism to health. Although the hypnotic procedure took place without a formal trance induction process, healing was accomplished by the successful manipulation of the patient’s expectation of the effects of imagined magnetic forces. So powerful were the images of the effects of these illusory forces, that these therapeutic interventions were often accompanied by violent convulsions on the part of the patient.
The second phase in the development of hypnosis centered on the techniques promoted by a disciple of Mesmer, the Marquis de Puyse-gur. Puysegur insisted that the healing power to realign the magnetic fluids in the patient’s body resided not in the magnets themselves, but rather in the magnetizer, who by mere willpower redirected the magnetic flow and promoted healing. Puysegur was the first hypnotist known to induce a trance in his patients, a state that he referred to as somnambulism. Thus, this phase in the development of hypnosis is distinguished by the use of (still imaginary) directed forces, combined with the introduction of the somnambulist, or the patient in a trance state. Puysegur’s techniques inspired several healing methods involving
hand passes (so-called laying on of the hands) and light touching in key areas of the body.
The next stage in the evolution of hypnosis began in 1819 with Abbe Faria, who developed the fixed-gaze method, in which he required subjects to fix their attention on an object in order to induce trance, after which he would offer healing suggestions to complete the intervention. Faria believed that the capacity for healing resided, not in the magnetizer’s powers, but rather in the patient’s trance state. Despite the publication of his results, his discoveries sparked little attention and remained unknown for some time.
In 1849, several decades later, and independently of Faria’s findings, Dr. James Braid also discovered that when patients experienced a period of focused attention on a light, they became more suggestible. He coined the term hypnosis to refer to the sleeplike state patients entered when they stared at the light for extended periods. As with Abbe Faria, Braid’s discovery that patients became more susceptible to the images elicited by his suggestions when in hypnosis than otherwise led him to conclude that the therapeutic process depended, not on the effect of any magnetic substance, but rather on the hypnotic state of the patient. Furthermore, Braid concluded that patients’ suggestibility was measured by their capacity to enter the hypnotic state. With the advances of both Abbe Faria and James Braid, hypnosis passed into what has been called the trance stage, during which trance alone, without the manipulation of imagined magnetic forces, became understood as the basis for the healing intervention.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Hip-polyte Bernheim and Auguste-Ambroise Liebault in France had fully determined that hypnosis is the result of psychological forces within the subject and not physical or any other kind of forces existing outside the subject. In 1958, after a two-year study, the American Medical Association accepted hypnosis as a viable clinical procedure. Currently, the term hypnosis has become exceedingly controversial, difficult to define and therefore to delimit. It is still often applied indiscriminately to the method of intervention called hypnotherapy, the hypnotic trance state, and the psychological and cognitive phenomena commonly elicited during trance, as well as to the means of inducing the trance state itself.
What is important to note about hypnosis and can clearly be seen in its history is the central role that the individual’s imagination, in the form of beliefs, suggested images, and expectations, plays in the hypnotic encounter, with or without the use of trance. In 1784, for example, at the request of the king of France, Benjamin Franklin led a commission to investigate the scientific validity of Mesmer’s magnetic claims. The result of the royal commission’s findings were that “imagination without magnetism produces convulsions, and that magnetism without imagination produces nothing” (cited in Bowers 1976, 8). Nevertheless, trance currently plays a central role in hypnotherapy, as in this state the suggestions of the hypnotist are thought to have magnified effects compared to those that similar manipulations would accomplish in a “normal,” or “waking,” state of consciousness. In any case, the patient’s expectation, which is a cognitive-affective state resulting from the combination of the imagined outcome of an event or procedure together with anticipation associated with that imagining, is at work not only within the hypnotic trance, but also in each aspect of any given therapeutic encounter. This is the case even prior to the formal intervention procedure. The psychophysiological effect of the impact of imagination plus anticipation is an ordinary occurrence in the history of medicine and is commonly reflected in the phenomenon often derisively referred to as the placebo effect (e.g., Bierman 1995; Overton 1998). The placebo effect can be defined as the beneficial physiological or psychological response that occurs as a result of the patient’s expectation alone, despite the ingestion of an inert substance or the use of an intervention that could be expected to have no effect. The placebo effect is the bane of the pharmacological industry, its power being so pervasive that every new drug or treatment must demonstrate that its efficacy is greater than that of a placebo (Harrington 1997). Furthermore, “its effectiveness has been attested to, without exception, for more than two millennia” (Shapiro and Shapiro 1997, 1). Hypnosis exemplifies the psychophysiological power of the human imagination, arguably the same power also at work during the placebo effect. Indeed, for Steve Bierman, the placebo effect is “the cardinal fact” of hypnosis (Bierman 1995, 67). The relationship between the placebo ef
fect and hypnosis is most evident during the earliest stages of the history of hypnosis, when it relied exclusively on the magnetizer’s manipulation of the patient’s expectation.
The counterpart of a placebo is often referred to as a nocebo, that is, an inert substance or otherwise nonfunctional intervention that produces negative physiological responses based on the patient’s fatalistic expectations. “Voodoo death,” in which the witch doctor or other shamanistic figure’s curse leads to the demise of the victim, is often presented as the classic example of the nocebo effect. The first scientific investigation of Voodoo death was undertaken by the physiologist Walter Cannon (1942), who described this shamanistic phenomenon as the “fatal power of the imagination working through unmitigated terror” (cited in Benson 1996, 41). Thus, the relationship between Voodoo death and hypnosis is easy to discern: “Voodoo death is hypnodeath” (Overton 1998, 159). Whether positive (placebo) or negative (nocebo), the imagined outcome of the patient’s expectation can often be so compelling to the individual’s physiology that the resulting imagining becomes, to a lesser or greater extent, enacted in the form of healing or ailment.
From the perspective of clinical hypnosis Bierman emphasized that placebo, that is, hypnosis without trance, and trancework indeed represent opposite ends of the “technique spectrum” (Bierman 1995, 67). It is also here where we can clearly find one of the common denominators between shamanic healing and hypnosis. In the shamanic healing encounter, the patient’s imagination is excited and exercised while observing the actions, in the form of physical behaviors and verbal descriptions of the shaman who, in trance, is mentally traveling in the supernatural realm. The reason for the “shamanic journey” or “ecstatic flight” in shamanic traditions lies in the etiology of disease in the shamanic paradigm, according to which pathology is often attributed to supernatural causes in the form of illicit interference, such as soul loss, witchcraft, or sorcery. Thus, the shaman must ecstatically, that is, in the form of an out-of-the-body experience, enter the supernatural realm to either obtain the knowledge to heal or to intervene in that dimension on behalf on the patient.
The role reversal between hypnosis and shamanism in the use of trance is an interest
ing one. For the hypnotherapist, the patient’s trance magnifies the therapeutic effect of the mental images elicited by the hypnotherapist’s words. For the shaman, the vividness of the experiences he describes when journeying plays powerfully on the patient’s imagination, heavily conditioned by culturally acquired expectations. In hypnotherapy, following the development of the Western model, the ability of the healer to heal resides in the mind of the patient, because disease is understood to originate within an individual. For this reason, it is there, in the patient’s mental realm, that the healer must endeavor to find a solution to the malady. Ultimately, both shamanic healing and hypnotherapy rely on the power of the human imagination to both create vivid and dynamic images, and to respond to such imagery, psychologically and physiologically, often in dramatic and enduring ways (Overton 1998).
Aside from the essential role that imagination plays in both shamanism and hypnosis, another area in which they are similar is in the nature of the trance experience itself. From a neurophysiological standpoint, the pattern of brain wave activity created during a hypnotic trance experience is practically identical to that created during a similar recording of shamanic journeys. In addition, the phenomenology of the shamanic journey can readily be replicated in any suggestible subject during hypnotic trance (Overton 1998, 2000). Consequently, it is reasonable to assume that both the shamanic journey and the hypnotic trance correspond to the same state of the mind-brain and are simply social and cultural adaptations of the same psychobiological phenomena. As the author concluded, where shamanic healing and clinical hypnotherapy principally differ “is in the fact that they are each cultural adaptations fundamentally rooted in opposing epistemological polarities” (Overton 1998, 167). In other words, for “the Westerner, knowledge resides in this reality, thus so should the clinician’s consciousness”; on the other hand, “for a member of a shamanic culture, knowledge resides in non-ordinary reality, and so should the shaman’s spirit” (Overton 1998, 167). Inherent to both healing methodologies is the fundamental use of the patient’s imagination in order to achieve the desired responses, be they psychological, or physiological, or both.
James A. Overton
See also: Healing and Shamanism; Psychology of Shamanism; Spirits and Souls;
Transformation
References and further reading:
Achterberg, J. 1985. Imagery in Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine. Boston: Shambhala.
———. 1987. “The Shaman: Master Healer in the Imaginary Realm.” Pp. 103—124 in Shamanism. Edited by Shirley Nicholson.
Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing House.
Alman, Brian M., and Peter Lambrou. 1990. Self-Hypnosis: The Complete Manual for Health and Self-Change. New York: Brunner/Mazel.
Benson, Herbert. 1996. Timeless Healing. New York: Scribner.
Bierman, Steve. 1995. “Medical Hypnosis.” Advances: The Journal of Mind-Body Health 11, no. 3.
Bowers, K. 1976. Hypnosis for the Seriously Curious. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.
Boyne, Gil. 1989. Transforming Therapy. Glendale, CA: Westwood Publishing Company.
Cannon, Walter B. 1942. “Voodoo Death.” American Anthropologist 44: 169—181.
Eliade, M. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Grinder, John, and Richard Bandler. 1981.
Trance-Formations. Neuro-Linguistic
Programming and the Structure of Hypnosis. Moab, UT: Real People Press.
Halifax, Joan. 1982. Shaman: The Wounded Healer. London: Thames and Hudson.
Harrington, A. 1997. “Introduction.” In The Placebo Effect: An Interdisciplinary Exploration. Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press.
Maxfield, Melinda. 1990. Effects of Rhythmic Drumming on EEG and Subjective Experience. Unpublished diss., Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Menlo Park, CA.
Overton, James A. 1998. “Shamanism and Clinical Hypnosis: A Brief Comparative Analysis.” Shaman 6, no 2: 151—170.
———. 2000. “Neurocognitive Foundations of the Shamanic Perspective: A Brief Exploration into the Role of Imagination in Cognition and in the Creation of Experience.” Shaman 8, no 1: 35—88.
Shapiro, A., and E. Shapiro. 1997. The Powerful Placebo: From Ancient Priest to Modern Physician. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Teitelbaum, Myron. 1978. Hypnosis Induction Technics. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
Wall, Steve. 1995. Shadowcatchers. New York: HarperPerennial.
Walsh, Roger N. 1990. The Spirit of Shamanism. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher.
Yapko, Michael. 1990. Trancework: An Introduction to the Practice of Clinical Hypnosis. New York: Brunner/Mazel.
I
INITIATION
The process of becoming a shaman combines an initial ecstatic or revelatory experience with a lengthy period of training to gain command of “techniques of ecstasy” (Eliade 1989, 13—14). The initial blow—sickness, dreams, fainting fits, fright, or lightning strike—consti-tutes a physical and psychological ordeal that sends the soul of the candidate on a journey. Recurrently, this spiritual crisis portends a drama of death and dismemberment of the physical body before renewal of the vital organs and rebirth. “A man must die before he becomes a shaman,” said the Akawaio of Amazonia (Wavell, Butt, and Epton 1966, 49; see also Eliade 1989, 83). The new shaman’s power to heal is proved by “successful mastery of the grounds of affliction” (Lewis 1989, 70). Initiation, the long process of acquiring that mastery, is paradigmatic, often reenacting the mythical exploits of the first shaman (Sullivan 1988, 390, 395). The new shaman’s primary ecstatic experiences recall a primordial time of unity before communication between heaven and earth was severed; the initiate is the privileged individual who renews that link as his soul travels to the Otherworld in the service of the community (Eliade 1989, 144).
In his classic comparative study, Mircea Eli-ade regarded the typical death and resurrection sequence as similar in morphology to other rites of passage, whether tribal or secret society initiations (1989, 64—65). Such rituals were lacking in Siberia and Central Asia, the preeminent centers of shamanic practice in the strict sense. But across North America rites for admission to secret societies could be difficult to distinguish from shamanic initiation. In Australia, although medicine men had a separate class of rites from the general tribal initiations, they dealt in secret knowledge of the cosmology in which the wider initiation was embed
ded, particularly with respect to the Rainbow Snake (Elkin 1977, 22—24). Numerous accounts from South America explicitly compare the treatment of novice shamans to that of menstruating girls at initiation (see, for example, Sullivan 1988, 824, note 37). Among the Ju/’hoansi (pronounce Zhun-twasi), who provide perhaps the most convincing African case of strict shamanic practice, Richard Katz reported in 1982 that half of all men and a third of women might learn techniques of ecstasy. Here, training for getting and controlling n/om (pronounced n-ts-om, roughly) potency to achieve !aia (pronounced kia), the healing trance, was scarcely formalized. Yet Katz remarked that the ceremonial preparation of girls for getting n/om was the same as for menarche or marriage—all were dangerous, transitional forms of n/om initiation (1982, 171). In other Bushman groups, the trickster-creator god governed both puberty initiation and trance activity (Guenther 1999, 112).
Death and Dismemberment
Danger and power threaten to engulf the candidate in the first uncontrolled encounter with the spirits. The cosmos is thrown into reverse. Animals hunt and eat man—such as the bear or walrus who tore and devoured the Inuit apprentice angakkoq (singular; plural, angakkut); people run wild—such as the prospective Tungus clan shamans who fed on “animals . . . caught directly with their teeth” (Shirokogoroff 1982, 350). The Buryat initiate’s body would lie lifeless and untouched seven days and nights while ancestral spirits carried off his soul and cut up and cooked his flesh “to teach him the art of shamanizing” (Ksenofontov, cited by Eli-ade 1989, 43—44). All over Siberia, as the candidate lay sick or “dead,” the soul witnessed limbs disjointed on iron hooks, blood drunk by
the spirits (souls of dead shamans), eyes torn from their sockets, flesh cut and pierced with arrows. Similarly savage accounts of the experience of shamanic dismemberment recur worldwide. In Australia, Adolphus Elkin reported the Mandjindja initiate being killed by “two totemic heroes,” cut open from neck to groin, his organs removed (1977, 21); an Unmatjera medicine man had tiny crystal atnongara stones thrown at him with a spear-thrower, right through his chest and head, and his insides were then cut out (Spencer and Gillen 1904, 480—481). Whereas Siberian and Australian novices saw their bodies dismantled by shaman ancestors, an Inuit apprentice had his soul extracted from his eyes, brains, and intestines by an old angakkoq. After arduous preparation, he performed a mental exercise of contemplation of his own skeleton; this reduction to the bones freed him from “the perishable and transient flesh and blood” (Rasmussen 1929, 114). Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff told of the “skeletonization” of South American Desana initiates, before they could be reborn from the bones (1997, 123, 147). Elsewhere in the Americas, initiates watched, in ecstasy, their own destruction, and then reconstitution, their worlds, like their bodies, being “reordered and refashioned” (Sullivan 1988, 400).
Renewal and replacement of body parts by magical substances or the organs of the spirits themselves is a persistent motif. In the Arctic, candidates might be reforged with metal, while the eviscerated Australian medicine men were packed with rock crystals, or “snakes,” the crystals being given the same name as the Rainbow Serpent (Eliade 1989, 132; Elkin 1977, 21-22, 33, 93). Crystals also feature typically in South American initiation, whether introduced into the body, or being carried as “organs removed to the outside” (Baer and Snell 1974, 69; cited by Sullivan 1988, 418). In this new condition of heightened sensory perception, the shaman’s body, like the world itself, is turned inside out, newly revealed.
In the first experience of n/om, the Ju/’hoansi novice is shot by the teacher with arrows of n/om, pricking the neck, belly, and spine (Katz 1982, 46, 168). Like long thorns, these arrows stick out of the gebesi—the pit of the stomach, liver, and spleen—so that the abdomen is transfixed with arrows in all directions, according to old healer Kxao ^Oah (pro
nounced Kau Dwa) (Katz 1982, 214). The shamanic rock art that alone remains to us of the lost Bushman cultures of southern Africa depicts such prostrate arrow-pierced figures of trancers (Garlake 1995, 130, 143-144). The same images of humans stuck with arrows are seen in cave art of the Franco-Cantabrian Upper Paleolithic, attesting to the antiquity of such experience. Among the Ju/’hoansi, the dance to powerful singing and rhythmic clapping activates the spiritual energy of n/om. The healers have said that it “heats up” with their movements, describing the searing pain as n/om boils in the gebesi, vaporizes, and rises up the spine. The first extraordinary pain of “drinking” n/om brings intense fear, the fear of death. For the heart to be open to boiling n/om, to enter into the trance state of !aia, one must be willing to die (Katz 1982, 45). Another old healer, /Ui, spoke of death: “Your heart stops. You’re dead. Your thoughts are nothing. You breathe with difficulty. You see things, num things, you see spirits killing people. You smell burning, rotten flesh. Then you heal, you pull sickness out. You heal, heal, heal. Then you live. Your eyeballs clear and you see people clearly” (Katz 1982, 45).
New Powers of Vision
To “see” the spirits, to have contact with the dead, as Eliade said, means being dead oneself (1989, 84). To attain their dreams and visions of the spirit world, initiates undergo a terrifying metaphysical journey. Again, narratives from all continents bear marked similarities. The narratives tell of souls from Siberia to South America carried off by great birds of prey—eagles, vultures or mythical bird-spirits. Their magical flight lands on a giant tree where souls may nest and ripen—such as the great fir tree of the Yakut—or undergo ordeals, as with the Tree of Trials of the Mataco. Other modes of travel on a vertical axis encompass lightning, rainbows, ladders and ropes to the sky, or descent through graves or cave passages to the Underworld. The drum was the vehicle in Siberia, described by the Yukaghir as the “lake” into which the shaman dove to descend to the kingdom of the shades, described by the Yakut and Mongols as the shaman’s “horse” ascending to spirits in the sky (Jochelson 1908, 59).
A Mongol shaman's decorated drum, from a traveling nomad artifact show, 1989. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
Such explorations map a mythical geography of the primordial cosmos at the time of creation (Sullivan 1988, 410—412). In the texts of Amazonian Desana initiation collected by Rei-chel-Dolmatoff, the initiate’s journey is symbolized on a vertical dimension by ecstatic birdlike flight into the clouds, likened to the soaring of the harpy eagle, and on a horizontal dimension by travel between the mouth and headwaters of rivers (1997, 123-124). In mythic time, rivers were the outstretched bodies of anacondas who originally carried people to settle on the banks. In several parts of Australia, medicine men received their power from the Rainbow Serpent or a water snake, which could also be seen in the sky. In a Forest River region initiation, an old doctor took the candidate, reduced to the size of a baby in a bag,
mounting to the sky by climbing the Rainbow Serpent as if a rope, throwing the initiate into the sky and “killing” him (Elkin 1977, 22). Alternatively, initiates from South Australia might be put into a waterhole, to be swallowed whole and regurgitated by the mythical snake living there (1977, 20). Bushman cultures likewise have described the soul’s travel in trance as climbing to the sky, God’s place, by threads or ropes, or else as immersion underwater. The ancient rock paintings of the Matopos in Zimbabwe show ladders to the sky in the form of giant snakes (Garlake 1995, 131). In South Africa, snakes or “rain animals” are frequently found in depictions of trance states. In 1873, one of the last Maluti Bushmen was asked to interpret such paintings from the Drakensberg. He spoke of the trancers as men who lived un
derwater, taming elands and snakes. They were people “spoilt” by the dance. Their noses bled, they would fall down and die, but Cagn, the Mantis-Trickster, gave “charms” to raise them again, in which there was burnt snake powder.
Traversing these new domains, the initiate gains a mystical ability to “see,” where “seeing” is a total experience involving all senses (Sullivan 1988, 423). Qaumaneq, the mystical enlightenment of the Inuit angakkoq, was described to Rasmussen as a mysterious light in the shaman’s body, inside his head, “a luminous fire which enables him to . . . see through darkness and perceive things and coming events which are hidden from others; thus they look into the future and into the secrets of others” (1929, 112). This sense came upon the candidate after days spent in solitude, invoking the spirits. The hut he was in suddenly rises; he saw far ahead of him, through mountains, as if the earth were a flat plain, to the end of the earth: “Nothing is hidden from him any longer; not only can he see things far, far away, but he can also discover souls, stolen souls” (1929, 113). When he first went to the master for instruction, an Iglulik Inuit novice said that he desired to see. Ju/’hoansi healers have spoken of “seeing properly” when in trance, allowing them to locate and “pull out” sickness (Katz 1982, 105). Though totally blind, Kxao ^Oah could see in !aia. God kept his eyeballs in a little cloth bag, and brought them down from heaven when he danced: “as the singing gets strong, he puts the eyeballs into my sockets, and they stay there and I heal. And when the women stop singing and separate out, he removes the eyeballs, puts them back in the cloth bag, and takes them up to heaven” (Katz 1982, 216).
Relations with Spirits
Critical to learning how to work with the comings and goings of souls is some dialogue with the spirits. In the guise of shaman ancestors, animals, plants, or magical substances, these beings may appear at first to molest and attack, but ultimately, with the initiate’s spiritual progress, they become helpers and guides. For the Chukchee, communication with the spirits was through beating the drum and singing. An extra whalebone drumstick was provided for the use of the spirits who approached. Hours of drumming and singing to attain the necessary
endurance for performance was a large part of the novice’s training. Sustained by the spirits, he should show no signs of fatigue (Bogoras 1904-1909, 424-425). Among the Bushmen, Katz reported that relations with the spirits remained confrontational. Once a Ju/’hoansi novice has become an owner of n/om, able to see and travel in !aia, healing becomes possible. The process is one of seeing which spirit is troubling a person, and negotiating with that spirit to leave. Experienced healers engage in struggle as equals with the gods or spirits of the dead; they can “bargain with them, insult them, even battle with them” (Katz 1982, 112). Friendly overtures and appeals turn to an interchange of screamed profanities and menacing gestures. Those at the dance hear the healer’s side of the dialogue in response to the spiritual opponent (Katz 1982, 113).
Such dramatic, even histrionic conversations, reproduced in chanting, form part of the repertoire of shamanic curing all over the world. By contrast with the Ju/’hoansi, however, in many communities the messages relayed through the shaman request propitiation for offenses against the spirit world. The primary role of an Inuit angakkoq was to police the taboos that preserved the community from fear of revenge by souls of the animals they had killed. As the Iglulik told Rasmussen, “The greatest peril of life lies in the fact that human food consists entirely of souls” (1929, 56). An Iglulik seance took the form of a public confessional, as the angakkoq asked his helping spirits to divulge to him what taboos had been violated, until the patient owned up to specific breaches and could be purged of transgressions (1929, 133-134).
The mythic and dream narratives of initiation direct the candidates in the proper relations with the spirits who are to be their teachers, and whom they will be able to summon. A future Samoyed shaman fell ill with smallpox; carried into the middle of a sea, he was addressed by his own Sickness, telling him that the Lords of the Water would give him the gift of shamanizing. Guided to the Underworld by an ermine and a mouse, he was shown seven torn tents. In one, he found the inhabitants of the Underworld, men of the Great Sickness (syphilis), who tore out his heart and threw it into a pot. In other tents were the Lord of Madness, the Lords of all the nervous disorders,
and evil shamans. Thus he learned the various diseases tormenting mankind (Eliade 1989, 39). In Yakut narratives, once the candidate’s soul had matured, parts of the body were shared out to the evil spirits of disease, one piece to each of the diseases the new shaman would be able to cure (Eliade 1989, 36, 38). The East Greenlander Sanimuinak told how he summoned his first spirit, or tartok. He went to a mountain facing the sunrise, with two great stones laid over a deep cleft. Rubbing the upper stone against the lower, he heard a voice out of the cleft and recoiled in terror. The next day, grinding the stones, he was seized with horrible pains at the sound of the voice, but on the next, he overcame his terror to command the spirit to come up. The stones lifted and a “sea monster armed with claw-like shears emerged, looking toward the sunrise” (Holm 1914, 298ff.; cited by Jakobsen 1999, 53).
In all these accounts, fasting and solitude aided the capacity to contact the spirits. The secluded Akawaio novice imbibed a special treebark infusion and vomited it out, so that the Spirit of the Bark entered the body. This enabled the shaman to rise into the sky, by a ladder or a tree. Along that same ladder other helper-spirits descended into the shaman’s body. The novice learned to ascend a mountain where tobacco grows on a tree that propagates all fruit and vegetables. A spirit gave tobacco to the shaman. Then the tobacco spirit made the novice’s own spirit small enough to fly out through the cracks in the house to the spirit realms. Tobacco spirit also brought down spirits of mountain birds to help the shaman. In particular, kumalak-bird spirits assisted the tobacco spirit in lifting the shaman’s soul with their songs (Butt Colson 1977, 51—52). At each stage, a spirit helped the shaman to rise and gain more spiritual help at the next stage.
In the initiate’s state of extreme vulnerability during the initial trauma and subsequent training period, strict taboos on food intake and sexual contact can be seen as protective precautions. An experienced shaman may be on hand to supervise such practical aspects of routine. However, often the master is a shaman who has died, or, if living, may be spiritually, not physically present. The master’s prime role is to act as a spiritual guide “through unfamiliar supernatural terrain” (Sullivan 1988, 398). In Desana traditions, an apprentice shaman spends
months or even years in building knowledge of plants and animals, cosmology, myths, and genealogies, as well as ritual procedures. He is also introduced to the hallucinogens that will carry him to the Otherworld. Once he has demonstrated his commitment to observing the rules of abstinence required of shamans, his master will take him, with perhaps two or three other experienced shamans, to a remote part of the forest. There, for months in isolation, the small group live on nothing but a little manioc, ingesting large quantities of drugs, spending “most of the time in their hammocks, their prostrate emaciated bodies convulsed, their faces contorted, their hoarse voices chanting endlessly to the rhythm of their gourd rattles” (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1997, 123). In this skeletal condition, the initiate falls into deep trance under the influence of a narcotic cocktail. The master-shaman “systematically administers a sequence of specifically prepared drugs,” modifying dosage and admixture. The initiate’s work in trance is to become aware of his own reactions to these psychotropics (Reichel-Dol-matoff 1997, 147).
Contemporary master shamans may assist initiates in their dealings with helper-spirits ultimately by establishing a lineage of communication with the original and most powerful mythical shaman (Sullivan 1988, 399). In Martin Gusinde’s remarkable account of the initiation of a Yamana yekamus (shaman), hallucinatory contact with the spirits of dead yekamus came through severe physical deprivation. Painted each day with a white mash, the initiate had to sit in a conical hut in a prescribed position, unable to move or touch the walls, completely silent, barely eating, drinking, or sleeping. Once bonds were established with ancient shamans as spiritual helpers, the novice was instructed by living experienced shamans and the ancient ones. His progress was seen as every day he rubbed his cheeks with white clay and wood-shavings. As he grew wiser, the rubbing revealed a softer, finer skin, visible only to yekamus. The rubbing continued until, exquisitely painful to touch, a third layer of skin— shiny, tender, and beautiful—was exposed (Gusinde 1936, 1307—1310; cited by Sullivan 1988, 393-395).
By contrast with these South American accounts of severe and closely supervised ordeals, the Ju/’hoansi do not draw on spiritual assis
tance in learning to drink n/om. Help and support from teachers, family, and friends is practical in the here and now. In Bushman culture, learning to heal is “a normal aspect of socialization” (Katz 1982, 44). Teachers carefully regulate the numbers of “arrows” and intensity of n/om they shoot into students; if fear escalates at the approach of !aia, the teacher may make the student stop dancing to “cool down” boiling n/om. Physical contact between the students and those supporting them at the dance is extensive. They are “carried,” physically, emotionally, and psychologically (Katz 1982, 46—47). Teachers may supervise dietary taboos for novices, while women students take care not to activate n/om during pregnancy (1982, 171-172).
Metaphors of Sexual and Reproductive Potencies: Gender Ambiguity
Of the variety of imagery symbolizing the metamorphosis of the new shaman from one state into another, pregnancy and fetal development are central motifs. Desana metaphysics utilizes a complex chain of interlinked models, including insemination and growth in the womb, the growth of plants, and transformative processes of cooking and pottery firing. These are accompanied by the changing neurophysiological sensations of the advancing narcotic trance (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1997, 147). Sexual metaphors permeate the manipulation of substances and props used in Desana initiation. The initial snuff-taking, using the phallic harpy eagle bone, has a connotation of insemination (1997, 128). The gourd rattles, which are viewed as wombs, contain tiny sharp quartz particles seen as semen, and they generate smoke or sparks when shaken for hours, this being an act of uterine creation (1997, 129). The types of firewood that effect transformation through heat include the “shrimp” tree, whitish with red veins, of phallic association, and the “bat” tree, referring to blood-sucking bats, which exudes red latex. Together, they mix semen and female blood. Added to these principles is the puikeroge tree whose bark, used in making straps of women’s food baskets, has a “peculiar, pungent odour which men compare with menstrual or estrous smells” (1997, 135). Drug-induced optical and physiological sensations are described in terms of the
erotic effects of a beautiful woman, a passion that has to be controlled (1997, 135-136, 140). Two metaphors represent the shamanic rebirth, one as penetrative passage through a hexagonal door of the river headwaters (1997, 144), the other conflating imagery of a fired pot and food cooked in a vessel. The pot is decorated with a zigzag motif seen around the waists of Desana women, their wombs identified as vessels for “cooking” the child within. The name of the design refers to the clitoris, that most gender-ambivalent sexual organ (1997, 146).
Mastery of combined female and male potencies, as seen in the Desana sequence repeatedly balancing “male” and “female” principles, underlies shamanic transformation. This is evident in overtly sexual unions with spirit teachers who grant powers to new shamans of the opposite sex. In Siberia, the ayami (tutelary spirit who chooses the shaman) of a Goldi shaman was a beautiful woman who had taught his ancestors to be shamans, and would teach him. He was to become her husband, or else she threatened to kill him. “When the ayami is within me, it is she who speaks through my mouth” said the shaman, “ . . .When I am . . . drinking pig’s blood [forbidden to all but the shaman], it is not I . . ., it is my ayami alone” (Sternberg 1925, cited by Eliade 1989, 73). Similar accounts of celestial “marriages” come from the Yakut, Buryat, and Teleut (Eliade 1989, 74-5). The ascent of the Teleut shaman was portrayed as a struggle with his new wife, who tried to detain him to make love in “seventh heaven” (Eliade 1989, 76). Among the Akawaio, the kumalak bird, whose malik spirit songs are the wings on which the shaman rises, becomes his wife during the seance, and is called “clairvoyant woman.” She can make a child with him, who grows up to help the shaman in his work (Wavell, Butt and Epton 1966, 55-56). Other more awesome female spirits governed shamanic powers: The Mother of the Sea, keeper of all sea creatures, was the terrible adversary of the Greenland angakkoq (Jakobsen 1999, 70); while the Mother of the Caribou was the source of qaumaneq, “enlightenment,” for the Iglulik (Rasmussen 1929, 113). In the Samoyed narrative of the journey to the Underworld, the shaman encountered two naked women covered in reindeer hair. Each was pregnant, one with the sacrificial
reindeer, the other with those that would aid and feed humans. Both gave him hairs to assist his shamanizing (Eliade 1989, 41).
Sexual contact with spirits is one way of expressing the shaman’s non-availability, at least periodically, for terrestrial sex (Lewis 1989, 61, 63). Another way is to place the shaman into a state of taboo equivalent to that of a menstruating woman, a feature of South American initiation. A Trio shaman described his position to Peter Riviere as “like a menstruating woman, an apt simile which stresses the state of betwixt and between in which they both exist” (1969, 268). When Baniwa shamans inhale snuff to open the Sky Door, it is said to be the menstrual blood of the male culture hero Kuai (Sullivan 1988, 410). As Sullivan argued, menstruation is the “best statement of the periodic nature of incarnate human life” (1988, 266). Since this periodic flow is manifest in both men and women, both sexes “menstruate.” For the Barasana, menstruation is a change of skin that makes regeneration possible. To give birth to a new generation of initiate boys in the He House ceremonial, men “must first be opened up and made to menstruate” (Hugh-Jones 1979, 132). The boys themselves are treated as menstruating women in seclusion (1979, 87). Not only women and initiate boys menstruate, but the sky itself undergoes a cosmic skinchange during rainy season, the “menstrual period of the sky,” Romi Kumu, Woman Shaman, from whom all life and shamanic power flows (1979, 179).
Across Australia, the Rainbow Serpent, which governs both shamanic initiation and the elaborate male menstruation rites of male initiation, expresses the same principle of cyclicity and cosmic renewal (Knight 1988). In Bushman rock art from Zimbabwe and South Africa, images of trance potency and menstrual potency are conflated as means of movement to the Otherworld. Figures transformed in trance climb to the sky by the snakelike periodic flow of giant female beings (Garlake 1995, 87). The power of fusing aspects of both sexes within a single gender is characteristic of shamans worldwide. Recounting several examples of transvestitism and taboos observed by both women and shamans in Siberia, Jochelson asked, “Why is a shaman believed to become more powerful when he is changed into a woman?” (1908, 52—53). Most feared by the
Chukchee was a shaman who changed sex, a “soft man” (Bogoras 1904-1909, 451-452).
Initiation might culminate in a final consecration, a public display of the new shaman’s ability to deal with the spirit world, and of his or her effective healing power. This display might involve formal examination by master shamans of the candidate’s knowledge of songs, myths, spirit genealogies and secret language as techniques of accessing the world beyond. The sequences of death and resurrection and the soul’s journey are recapitulated. A Manchurian Tungus initiate had to tell the history of the spirits sent to him by the master; each night after the performance he climbed a specially built structure of trees and beams (Shirokogoroff 1935, 352). In an elaborate replay of his ascent, the Buryat initiate climbed a tree set into the center of a yurt (Eliade 1989, 119). Much was made of sacrifice in the Buryat ceremonies, and purification with water and blood, which should recur each new moon (1989, 116-117). Yakut and Goldi shamans were likewise consecrated with the blood of sacrificed animals (1989, 114-115). Such ritual tree-climbing coupled with anointing with blood and sacrifice also marked the Araucanian shaman’s accession. The candidate appeared in company with the old women machi, who drummed ecstatically for her to dance. One of the older women, blindfold, cut the candidate with white quartz, and cut herself, mixing her blood with the candidate’s. The new machi mounted the special tree-trunk structure, called the rewe. The older machi, climbing after, stripped from her the bloodstained fleece of a sacrificed sheep. Time alone would destroy this sacred object, hung out beside the rewe, the machi’s ladder to the sky (Eliade 1989, 123-124).
Camilla Power
See also: !Kung Healing, Ritual, and
Possession; Australian Aboriginal Shamanism; Buryat Shamanism; Central and South American Shamanism; Evenki Shamanism;
Kanaima Shamanism; Rock Art and Shamanism; Sakha Shamanism; Siberian Shamanism
References and further reading:
Baer, Gerhard, and Wayne W. Snell. 1974. “An Ayahuasca Ceremony among the Matsigenka (Eastern Peru).” Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie 99, nos. 1 and 2: 63-80.
Bogoras, Waldemar. 1904—1909. The Chukchee.
Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. 7. Leiden and New York: Brill and Stechert.
Butt Colson, Audrey. 1977. “The Akawaio Shaman.” Pp. 43—65 in Carib-speaking Indians: Culture, Society and Language. Edited by Ellen B. Basso. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Elkin, Adolphus Peter. 1977. Aboriginal Men of High Degree: Initiation and Sorcery in the World’s Oldest Tradition. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions.
Garlake, Peter. 1995. The Hunter’s Vision: The Prehistoric Art of Zimbabwe. London: British Museum Press.
Guenther, Mathias. 1999. Tricksters and Trancers: Bushman Religion and Society. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Gusinde, Martin. 1936. “In der Medizinmannschule der Yamana-Feuerlander” (In the Medicineman’s School of the Yamana-Fireland People). Ciba Zeitschrift (Basel) 4, no. 38: 1307-1310.
Holm, Gustav. 1914 [1887]. Legends and Tales from Angmagsalik. Collected by G. Holm. Meddelelser om Gronland Bd. 39.
K0benhavn: Rhodes.
Hugh-Jones, Stephen. 1979. The Palm and the Pleiades: Initiation and Cosmology in Northwest Amazonia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jakobsen, Merete Demant. 1999. Shamanism: Traditional and Contemporary Approaches to the Mastery of Spirits and Healing. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Jochelson, Waldemar. 1908. The Koryak. Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Memoir of the
American Museum of Natural History, vol. 6. Leiden and New York: Brill/Stechert.
Katz, Richard. 1982. Boiling Energy:
Community Healing among the Kalahari Kung. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Knight, Chris. 1988. “Menstrual Synchrony and the Australian Rainbow Snake.” Pp.
232-255 in Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruation. Edited by Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.
Lewis, Ioan M. 1989. Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession. 2d ed. London: Routledge.
Rasmussen, Knud. 1929. Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos. Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921-1924, vol. 7. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag.
Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo. 1997. Rainforest Shamans: Essays on the Tukano Indians of the Northwest Amazon. Dartington, UK: Themis Books.
Riviere, Peter. 1969. Marriage Among the Trio: A Principle of Social Organisation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Shirokogoroff, Sergei Mikhailovich. 1982. Reprint. Psychomental Complex of the Tungus. New York: AMS Press. Original edition, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1935.
Spencer, Baldwin, and F. J. Gillen. 1904. The Northern Tribes of Central Australia. London: Macmillan.
Sternberg, Leo. 1925. “Divine Election in Primitive Religion.” Pp. 472-512 in Compte-Rendu de la XXIe Session, Pt. 2 (1924).
Goteborg: Congres International des Americanistes.
Sullivan, Lawrence E. 1988. Icanchu’s Drum:
An Orientation to Meaning in South American Religions. New York and London: Macmillan. Wavell, Stewart, Audrey Butt, and Nina Epton.
1966. Trances. London: George Allen and Unwin.
“MAGIC,” POWER, AND RITUAL IN SHAMANISM
Shamanism involves a religious complex characterized by trance, curing, and a belief in the possibility of cosmic flight, centering on an individual (the shaman) believed to possess superhuman powers. In shamanic ritual, there is articulation of power at several levels—psycho-logical, social, and religious (Saladin d’Anglure 1994). The shaman appears, from this perspective, as a mediator who transcends these levels in a complex and dynamic fusion. The shaman is often able to overcome the contradictions between binary oppositions (man/woman, human/animal, human/spirit, living/dead), through playing with ambiguity, paradox, and transgression, in order to manage illness, misfortune, and other crises.
Theories of Magic and their Implications in Understanding Shamanism
Shamanic rituals have long intrigued outsider observers because they appear to use “magical” powers. The terms magic and magical have been used loosely with a variety of meanings, such as illusion or sleight of hand; the ability to change form, visibility or location, or to create something from nothing; spirit invocation and command; and inspiring awe. Nineteenth-century evolutionists such as Edward B. Tylor and James George Frazer focused on comparisons that allowed them to make what they saw as ranked distinctions in the context of a linear progression of human cognition and cosmology from “magic” to “religion” to “science.”
Later, by the 1960s, anthropologists came to recognize that so-called magical power really involves processes that activate or express connections; magical power activates connections among things and projects specific forces
among them. In these processes, symbols play a crucial role. In cultural context, objects and behaviors can become symbolic and have extraordinary magical power. Some symbols transcend cultural boundaries and may be universal key symbols evoking such themes as life and death (Turner 1967); for example, the color red is worn by a Korean shaman called a mansin in her rituals to treat unfulfilled desires for marriage and children (Kendall 1989).
Most symbols can be understood only within a specific cultural context, as recognized in magical or religious ritual. A symbol can be arbitrary, carrying a specific meaning assigned to it by its user and given to it by speech or even only through thoughts. In Niger, West Africa, for example, some Tuareg diviners wear blue, a color associated with spirits (Rasmussen 2001). Symbols can also be transformed from one ritual context to another. This is illustrated in Mayan shamanic rituals when an ordinary table is converted into “sacred” ritual space by arranging candles in proper symbolic directions for purposes of healing (Fabrega and Silver 1973). Objects used in shamanic rituals addressing deities can be used in magical ways, their power intended to motivate the natural forces, or as a defense against malignant spirits or against forces directed at a person by the malign magic of another. For example, Claude Levi-Strauss argued that the symbols in a myth recited by a Cuna shaman are effective in their metaphoric power in facilitating a difficult birth (1963). Among the Inupiat of northern Alaska, a coil of leather ribbon about a half an inch wide with a large dull red bead bound to the end and having knots at the top and bottom, was traditionally shamanic: It was worn around the forehead when hunting, an allusion to the creator wearing a raven’s beak set in the middle of the forehead (Turner 1996). Recall-
ing Frazer’s classic theory of sympathetic magic, many symbols used in magical practices assert power either metaphorically, through similarity, or metonymically, through contact.
The resemblance between the thing and the cultural symbol of it may or may not be obvious, however. Thus the principles of what is called magic involve the manipulation of natural forces along a network of natural interconnections by symbolic projections of power. People can affect forces through manipulation of symbols in diverse ways according to context; for example, the use of amulets involves human efforts to increase the efficacy of natural forces along lines they would or might move on anyway, as in farming, gambling, or love magic. Among the Tuareg, a seminomadic, socially stratified Muslim people in Niger, West Africa, many Islamic scholars have shamanic medium-istic healing powers. They manipulate Qur’anic and non-Qur’anic symbols into their amulet charms according to traditional and changing social contexts. For example, one traditional amulet consists of an envelope, or “locket,” filled with papers on which Qur’anic verses are written; its cover is made of metals with special powers derived from pre-Islamic beliefs: Silver symbolizes happiness; copper coagulates blood; and copper protects like a shield. A more modern amulet reflects the political violence of the recent armed separatist conflict between the Tuareg and the central government: One child was seen wearing a bullet as an amulet, made for the purpose of protecting him from his father’s tragic fate of being shot to death (Rasmussen 2001).
Some scholars, such as Keith Thomas (1971), have assumed, following the earlier unilineal evolutionary views of Frazer and Ty-lor, that magic declines with advances in modern science. However, like science, magic uses logical principles. Magical thinking is found in all times and places (Malinowski 1948). Its powers address human questions that science cannot always explain. More recently, many scholars have recognized that magic will accommodate science, even stand as part of it (Horton 1982).
Other theories of magic take into account their possible empirical validity based upon laboratory research in parapsychology: This research has produced empirical support for some phenomena claimed by magical tradi
tions. Studies have indicated, for example, that humans can exercise psychokinetic influence on radioactive decay, on computerized number generators, on growth rates of plants, fungi, and bacteria, and on healing in animals. Most recently, some scholars have critically deconstructed and recast magic, religion, and science as culture-bound distinctions and Western classifications, and have questioned efforts to make any system conform neatly to one or another of these categories (Jackson 1989; Tambiah 1990). Inspired in some cases by the works of Carlos Castaneda emphasizing the “separate reality” known to Yaqui Native Americans of the Mexican Highlands, they have considered magical phenomena as objectively real, whether or not they are inexplicable in terms of Western scientific knowledge (Stoller and Olkes 1987; Jackson 1989). Calling magic irrational or rational according to Western cultural formulations therefore poses complex epistemological problems that affect the understanding of shamanic ritual powers.
Shamanic Ritual and Power
Scholars of shamanism have long recognized the importance of the performance aspect of shamanic ritual powers (Bogoras 1904—1909; Rasmussen 1929). The core of shamanism, the shamanic “seance,” has been variously portrayed, depending on the cultural context and perspectives of observers and participants. The term seance, however, reveals religious bias and problems of translation of cultures: Many early observers saw Siberian seances through Russian Orthodox eyes as the most fearsome examples of “wild frenzied truck with the devil.” More recent analysts, for example the Tuvan insiderethnographer Mongush Borakhovich Kenin-Lopsan (1987), in contrast have stressed the compelling poetry of shamanic chanting. Spirit-invoking songs help shamans enter trance, and key mythic metaphors depicting shamans as dancing, riding, and flying on drum-boats or drum-steeds to the supernatural world are taken literally, not merely as poetic images.
In her study of the tende n goumaten spirit possession exorcism rituals among the Tuareg of Niger, the author has drawn attention to the importance of the aesthetics of the sung poetic verses in the therapy of exorcism: Local partici
pants stated that these songs “soothe illnesses of the heart and soul” and “distract” the possessed from their troubles (Rasmussen 1995, 130). Among the Tuareg, there are also shaman-like herbalists with special mediumistic powers called medicine women (Rasmussen 1998, 147—171), who in their healing rituals use natural and cultural substances both literally and metaphorically to refer to, but also negotiate among, sometimes opposed spheres in local ideology (Rasmussen 1998, 151). They translate and negotiate men’s and women’s interests in fertility, descent, and property, bridging and reconciling conflicts. Many patients, for example, come for attention and resolution of personal difficulties, or to seek medicines to become fatter or to conceive a child. In their managing of female biological fertility and the cultural and legal descent interests of men and women, and in their cooperation with Islamic scholars, medicine women comment on and reinterpret important issues in Tuareg society: matrilineal and patrilineal property institutions and pre-Islamic and official Islamic worldviews (Rasmussen 1998, 151). These worldviews become intertwined and sometimes reversed in herbalists’ and diviners’ ritual healing.
In their ritual uses of substances and spaces, Tuareg herbal medicine women work with the earth, ground, and clay rather than iron or other metals worked by smiths. During treatment, the Tuareg herbalist uses massage and touch, contacting not only the woman patient’s stomach but also the ground in order to take the disease out of both patient and healer. The herbalist has to throw the disease away, allowing it to be absorbed by the ground, because she is heavy from the patient’s illness and needs to have the ground take it off or away. The ground, which opens up during childbirth, is associated with the Old Woman of the Earth, who threatens a woman giving birth. To counteract this danger, babies should be born inside the mother’s tent, on clean sand. Possessed persons are cured of spirits when they fall exhausted to the ground. Herbalists also work with trees and wood, leaves and bark; rocks and stone; and millet and other nonmeat foods (rather than animals, which are more often offered by Islamic scholars and male diviners). Mountains, rocks and stone, metal and wood, all are richly resonant with symbolism in Tuareg cosmology,
mythology, and ritual. Mountains are described in myth as related to one another in kinship, like people.
Herbalist diviners transform substances and bridge domains. They combine, but also reinterpret, natural and cultural substances and spaces. They convert some natural materials into cultural materials: for example, those medicines they cook over the fire. They combine pre-Islamic and Islamic substances, actions, and spaces. They work both in the home space of villages and camps, where they heal, and in the wild, in the dried riverbeds, mountains, and deserts where they gather. The latter are all distant from homes and opposed to maternal tent, mosque, and houses. Herbalists alternate between the wild and these points of habitation. They cure in domestic spaces, but gather medicines in the wild, near stone ruins of ancestral spirits. Before they leave to gather medicines, they circle millet and sugar three times over the heads of maternal nieces and nephews. They pray before pulling leaves or bark off each tree and bush; for each tree, one offers a different prayer, because some trees produce big, important medicines and others are less important (Rasmussen 1998, 163). In local cosmology and ritual, these trees are associated with matrilineal spirits.
Herbalists carry Islamic prayer beads along on gathering expeditions; they pronounce “Bissmil-lah” (in the name of God), an Islamic benediction, before some trees; touch the ground three times and perform Islamic ablution motions and recite full Islamic prayers; and also write Qur’anic verses in the sand. Herbalist diviners are accompanied by young, preadolescent maternal nephews, never mature men, on their gathering expeditions. They spit al baraka (Islamic blessing) power on some leaves and bark before placing them in their medicine bags. They are obliged to remove bark from trees with a rock or stone, but not an ax or any tool made of metal, particularly iron; iron is believed to make medicine ineffective because iron repels spirits, and in this context medicine women seek to attract rather than repel spirits (Rasmussen 1995, 1998). Yet herbalist diviners also display devotion to Islam. Thus they stand on a boundary. They appeal to locally recognized symbols, making sometimes conflicting power sources more compatible. They evoke and commemorate, comment upon and redirect these
forces, facilitating their reinterpretation according to context.
The substances and spaces with which many shamanic ritual specialists work are associated with unpredictable and potentially destructive powers, but also with their conversion and regeneration into positive forces by the mediation of these specialists, who are able to successfully navigate opposed and dangerous social and ritual territories. Their roles take on multiple nuances and illustrate refinements that mediating roles can exhibit in cultural systems.
In the Mayan Mexican community of Zi-nacantan, Mexico, studied by Horacio Fabrega and Daniel Silver (1973), mediumistic healers called h’iloletik, usually male, received their powers through divine revelation, and practiced by combined physical and spiritual efforts, and thus could be called shamans. A new h’ilol usually went through a period of ambivalent status and furtive activity, during which he engaged circumspectly in curing activities but attempted to avoid public recognition of his role, which would entail onerous public duties. It is only when he had been discovered and forced to take part in public ceremonies performed by the h’iloletik that the public could be sure of his identity. Notions of cause, disease, and illness, logically separated in the Western biomedical system, were fused and condensed in shamanic rituals in Zinacantan: A patient’s symptoms were seen as objectifications of spiritual and malevolent powers. Local residents said the disease traveled and entered “like smoke or wind spreads and diffuses in and around an object,” in concepts analogous to force, damage, injury, and evil (Fabrega and Silver 1973, 93).
In Zinacantan, a h’ilol’s specialized knowledge of bodily mechanisms or manifestations of illness is less important than his ownership of the spiritualistic power that confirms his actions in the medico-ritual sphere. He wrestles with superhuman, malevolent, and potentially life-destructive cosmic forces. It is in performing public and private ceremonies connected with the social and interpersonal affairs of patients that a h’ilol displays his powers. His mediatory ritualistic acts are designed to bind earthly humans in the everyday social world to the deliberations of ancestral and other superhuman beings, and his acts display a h’ilol’s supporting and unifying functions in the cul
ture (Fabrega and Silver 1973, 217). Rum, for example, helps the curer see: Intoxication aids his divinatory powers. Rum consumed by participants in a curing ceremony is simultaneously received by the deities, to whom it is served as a sign of respect and propitiation. Foods of ritual importance include chicken, coffee, sweet corn gruel, and Ladino bread, a round bread enjoyed in North Africa and surrounding regions. In rituals, social behavioral sequences are common and are replicated on different levels of activity throughout the system: The sequences involve formal courtesy elements such as the drinking rituals, ritual meals, feeling the pulse, fetching the curer, and the curer’s gift. Proper use of ritual objects converts them into offerings to the gods: Flowers, candles, food, rum, and gifts are all received by the gods only after they are transformed by prescribed uses in rituals. Thus the ritual is a transaction in which participants offer the gods not only ritual sacrifices themselves, but also the ceremonial labor needed to convert them to divine use (Fabrega and Silver 1973, 268).
Gods were believed to be present at various stages of the ritual, summoned by the shaman’s prayers and by ritual placement of rum on the table and the hearth, and before crosses. Rum was an outstanding avenue of communication and ritual power between individuals, other persons, and the gods. Ritual drinking also symbolized respect, and reflected the existing seniority relationships of participants. The patient tended to move to a position of seniority in a curing ceremony, drinking right after the h’ilol and marching directly in front of him, whatever his social standing. This may express the extraordinary position in which illness temporarily placed the patient, as the center of supportive activities from all the participants.
Among the Inupiat of northern Alaska studied by Edith Turner (1996), during traditional shamanic treatment a shaman sang to whale meat in a patient’s stomach, telling it to bring the bad thing up and out, and then called and waited. The bad thing came up and up, by the power of the whale meat the patient ate, up into the skin of the abdomen, and out. The shaman had hands cupped on the patient’s stomach; took it along carefully and blew it out up the smoke hole, and the patient slept for a whole day afterward, awakening hungry (Turner 1996, 174).
Turner also related stories of Inupiat doing “shaman’s tricks” in the modern era, for example, doubling, such as spirit presence and actual presence (the shaman in two places at once), and other tricks hard to explain in scientific terms (Turner 1996, 132). Turner described the way an Inupiat woman named Claire, at different stages in her life, experienced episodes that psychologists in our culture might term “fugue states” or even “psychosis,” yet these episodes did not derive from psychosis. They appeared to be classic eruptions of shamanic experience, just as the ancient Inupiat knew them, lasting four days (Turner 1996, 205—208). In early times, these were characterized by meeting with something fearful, a spirit of a dead person or of an animal, one that first afflicted the incipient shaman, then changed and became a helper. This woman saw a devil continually in her peripheral vision, and uttered nonsense words, upsetting her relatives. But at the end of the four-day episode, she was able to pray to Jesus again, and afterward her healing power was stronger. She appealed to Jesus to be her helper, seeing him as the opposite of Satan, and thus her change was parallel to the traditional shift in the spirit from being dangerous to helpful. Her appeal was to Jesus, yet the basic experience was quite close to that of shamans in preChristian days. Thus shamanic rituals are often resilient: Shamanic and “official” religious rituals cannot be easily separated, and one does not necessarily replace the other, despite pressures exerted by missionaries and other outside influences.
Cosmology, Belief Systems, Myths, and Practices in Shamanic Power
The shaman medium is perceived to be a mediator between spiritual and human worlds. This mediation is often painful, for the mystical forces shamans describe themselves as negotiating in ritual are fraught with danger and easily misused. The process requires moral, psychological, and physical strength, as well as exquisite knowledge and dramatization of diverse cultural symbols and histories of one’s people.
The shamanic worldview often presupposes a multileveled cosmos, with the heavens, and often an Underworld, complementing the mundane world of everyday existence. Shamans move between these worlds in the exercise of
their calling. Mystical flight is integrally connected in most versions of shamanism with two other themes: curing soul loss and interaction with spirit beings. It is the task of a shaman to travel to one or another cosmic realm to retrieve the soul of the sick person and thus to restore the sick person to health. These powers that shamans exercise are attributed to mastery over various spirits, both those who act as familiars, and those malignant spirits whose powers shamans must overcome. Siberian Evenki shamans invoked cacophonous spirits who raced inside seance tents so exuberantly that tents and participants alike trembled. These seances often produced cathartic confessions of taboo-breaking. Knud Rasmussen (1929), for example, noted that in one Iglulik (Inuit) session, there was confession of violating menstrual taboos, used to explain miscarriage.
Among the Inupiat in northern Alaska, traditionally the spirits and ancestors worked through shamans in healing, changing the weather, finding lost people and objects, and communicating with the dead (Turner 1996, xvii). These sessions took place in the neighborhood underground meeting house. If a shaman wished to make a journey to cure a sick person, drummers and singers would assemble and sing the songs the shaman had taught them, who in turn had been taught them by his or her helping spirit. The shaman, in dancing the part of his or her spirit animal, would eventually fall, and the shaman’s spirit would depart, leaving the body behind. He or she would take a trip under the water or ice, or underground, or above the tundra, and would visit the home of the animals, asking them to restore the sick person’s health. In some cases, a shaman might extract small spirit spear points from the patient’s body by means of sucking where the trouble was perceived to be.
Healing is inseparable from mediumistic actions among many peoples. For example, Inu-piat shamans conducted dancing and drumming to bring caribou, verbally giving the young their oral traditions at the same time. One oral tradition tells that a shaman went under the water in his ball of fire in order to help a sick young man. The shaman arrived at the animals’ house under the water. The animals’ parkas were hanging on the wall. Inside the animals’ house the sick young man was lying down. The shaman asked a favor of animal people, “Let our relative come
back and not die. We need him to hunt for us, he is young.” So they let him go. At that moment, back in his village, the young man lying on his bed began to get better, and he recovered (Turner 1996, 50-51).
In this classic Native American shamanic soul retrieval, the shaman learned to address the animals properly and respectfully, talking to them, developing a relationship of respect with animals. Thus human beings, by living well with animals, learned the Inupiat art of drumming, imitating in their drumming the rhythm of the heartbeat of the mother animal; they learned dog sledding, and after that, trading. According to Turner, this type of spirit cosmology and mythology contrasts with that of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam; in the latter, peoples are embedded in a hierarchy. God is usually envisaged at the apex of the hierarchy, like a king; humans come next, animals at the bottom. The idea in Inupiat cosmology is a continuous cycling of all existing things; here, it is often animals who are masters and teachers, not human beings, who are weaker and need their help (Turner 1996, 86).
Among some other peoples, by contrast, shamanic powers derive from an interweaving of hierarchical official and nonhierarchical unofficial religious cosmologies. Among the Tuareg of Niger, the Islamic and pre-Islamic spirit pantheons are both powerful in mediumship and healing. Different persons may inherit or cultivate a pact with different spirits, bringing them under their control through offerings and ritual restrictions and acquiring mediumistic divining and healing powers. The Qur’an mentions jinn, “spirits,” and these are appealed to by Islamic scholars in their Qur’anic verse healing and divination, but there are also non-Qur’anic, matrilineal ancestral spirits appealed to by some herbalist medicine women who are gifted with special mediumistic powers. Other non-Qur’anic spirits are called Kel Essuf, People of Solitude. These spirits are the focus of non-Qur’anic diviners called bokaye (singular boka), and are also addressed in the public ritual exorcism of the tende n goumaten possession ritual.
Power in the Use of Altered States, Rituals, and Artifacts
Shamanic power generally occurs through trance. As a concept, however, trance consti
tutes a naturalistic gloss, a cover-term describing a range of altered states of consciousness. The focus here is how shamans, and sometimes also their followers and patients, attain trance, and how this process is related to the magic power of shamans.
The widespread cultural association of shamanic/mediumship/possession rituals with the experience of struggle and control, yet also creativity, is related both to the phenomenology of these experiences and to the distribution of power in society. As Ivan Karp pointed out, power in Max Weber’s sense of material access and secular control does not adequately account for the power of possession or mediumship trance in its diverse cultural formulations (Karp 1989, 96-97). In cultures where the cosmos is seen as constituted of transactions, flows, and interactions between various orders and levels, and boundaries are fluid, the person is seen as porous and open to diverse outside influences, yet above all power resides in access to semantic creativity, to meaning making.
The way this kind of power works is shown in the shamanic healing powers recognized in Jamaican peasant culture, which distinguishes between sacred and profane, referred to locally as spiritual and temporal (Wedenoja 1989, 79). Balm healing is often called a spiritual science, because it deals with spirits, treats spiritual afflictions, and relies on trance states. Although God is held to be the ultimate source of healing power, power is delivered to healers through angels by means of the Holy Spirit. The balm healer, a woman, is essentially a shaman, a person who has received—generally during a severe illness—a spiritual calling to heal the nation and the spiritual gifts of divination and healing. The balmist’s power to heal is based on spirit mediumship: She works with angel familiars who advise her in diagnosis and treatment. Balm-yards can be identified by banners (flags) flying from poles, often next to a small structure. Generally, they are enclosed by fences and have an arched gateway guarded by a follower. In addition, one or more offering tables are on the ground: poles, about five feet high, with a glass of water and fruit set on top to attract and feed angels.
In a similar fashion, in Tuareg culture, many diviners act as mouthpieces for spirits, who speak through the diviners in invasions and
cures. In Tuareg bokaye divination, the senses, particularly those affected by the use of nonvisual media such as aroma, are powerful means of communicating with spirits within the ritual trance context and outside it more generally: The boka, a male diviner, is obliged to constantly maintain and reinforce relations with his spirits by keeping perfumes at home in order to attract them. He is, moreover, obliged to wear perfume, as well as distinctive clothing of a deep blue hue; blue is a color associated with spirits tamed for constructive purposes, as opposed to black spirits, which are more ambiguous (Rasmussen 1995; 2001, 117). He is also obliged to carry ritual paraphernalia: a small mirror; a small copper ring; and a non-Islamic amulet. The mirror symbolizes iconically the process of divination, and is believed to repel evil eye—like powers of jealousy and coveting. Copper is believed to heal wounds. The diviner needs to wear the ring and the non-Islamic amulet exactly at the moments he throws the cowry shells as dice. He is supposed to refrain from sexual relations with unmarried women or prostitutes, to apply henna to his palms, fingernails, and toenails, and the soles of his feet, and must give alms to the poor. The diviner asks trees’ spirits in Hausa regions of Niger and Nigeria about illnesses, and these spirits instruct him on how to treat certain types of psychological afflictions with specific roots he must gather on certain days only, at dawn.
While most Siberian and Central Asian studies have supported the idea that autosuggestion rather than narcotic or alcohol-induced ecstasy is typical of the induction of trance in classic shamanism, evidence in the Americas describes the use of trance-producing drugs, from peyote, datura, and psilocybin to morning glory and tobacco (Furst 1972). A reexamination of Asian data has led to greater acceptance of the possible antiquity of use of the Vedic soma (often identified as the mushroom amanita mus-caria) and hemp seed (cannabis).
Witnesses have claimed that shamans, while in trance, have produced spirit voices in odd places, walked on hot coals or water, withstood cold, stabbed themselves without leaving scars, disappeared and reappeared, escaped the bonds of ropes, found lost objects and people, and even induced or controlled floods, winds, and storms. Some of these talents, celebrated in Siberian and Central Asian lore, may have in
volved sleight of hand tricks, ventriloquism, and hypnosis. Some Siberian shamans admit to using tricks, but claim their feats would not work if spirits were not helping them. Other behavior, including actual cures, is less easily explained with Western biomedical models of scientific knowledge. One medical explanation is that natural morphines called endorphins are stimulated in the brain. Thus reports of various parapsychological phenomena occurring in shamanic performances have come to be given more serious attention by anthropologists. Religious healing, shamanic curing, and Western psychotherapy should be investigated as equally clinically efficacious, though not necessarily exactly equivalent phenomena.
Michael Taussig (1987, 460—461) in his study of Putumayan shamanism has argued, alternatively, that the ritual power of shamanism lies not with the shaman at all, but rather with the coming together of shaman and patient, constituting imagery essential to the articulation of what he calls implicit social knowledge. Power comes from a joint construction of the healer and the sick person in the colonialist context (Taussig 1987, 460). This is a privileged moment in the casting of the reality of the world, in its making and its remaking. Taussig cautioned against projecting the concept of magic held by Western academia or science onto shamanic trance seances (Taussig 1987, 460-463).
Thus in shamanic altered states, there are many performative features of magical or ritual symbolic actions that are understood only when extracted from the context of exclusive belief in positivistic causality. The shamans’ magical powers cannot be rigidly separated into technical and expressive aspects.
Susan J. Rasmussen
See also: Christianity and Shamanism;
Dramatic Performance in Shamanism; Entheogens and Shamanism; Hausa Shamanistic Practices; Healing and Shamanism; Marabouts and Magic; Mayan Shamanism; Sufism and Shamanism;
Transformation
References and further reading:
Bogoras, Waldemar. 1904-1909. The Chukchee.
Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. 7. Leiden and New York: Brill and Stechert.
Dow, James. 1986. “Universal Aspects of Symbolic Healing.” American Anthropologist 88: 56-69.
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Fabrega, Horacio, Jr., and Daniel B. Silver. 1973. Illness and Shamanistic Curing in Zinacantan: An Ethnomedical Analysis. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Favret-Saada, Jeanne. 1977. Deadly Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Furst, Peter T., ed. 1972. Flesh of the Gods: The Ritual Use of Hallucinogens. New York: Praeger.
Harner, Michael, ed. 1973. Hallucinogens and Shamanism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hoppal, Mihaly, ed. 1984. Shamanism in Eurasia. Gottingen: Edition Herodot.
Horton, Robin. 1982. Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jackson, Michael. 1989. Paths toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Karp, Ivan. 1989. “Power and Capacity in Rituals of Possession.” Pp. 91-109 in The Creativity of Power. Edited by William Arens and Ivan Karp. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Kendall, Laurel. 1989. “Old Ghosts and Ungrateful Children: A Korean Shaman’s Story.” Pp. 138-157 in Women as Healers.
Edited by Carol McClain. New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press.
Kenin-Lopsan, Mongush Borakhovich. 1987.
Obriadovaia Praktika I Folkor Tuvinskogo Shamanstva [The Ritual Practice and Folklore of Tuvan Shamanism]. Norosibirsk: Nauka.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. Structural Anthropology. Translated from the French by Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf. New York: Basic Books.
Long, Joseph K. 1976. “Shamanism, Trance, Hallucinogens, and Psychical Events: Concepts, Methods, and Techniques for Fieldwork among Primitives.” Pp. 301-313 in The Realm of the Extra-Human: Agents and
Audiences. Edited by Agehananda Bharati. The Hague: Mouton.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1948. Magic, Science and Religion. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
McNaughton, Patrick. 1988. The Mande Blacksmiths. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Michael, Henry N., ed. 1963. Studies in Siberian Shamanism. Translated from the Russian by Stephen and Ethel Dunn. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Mikhailovskii, V. M. 1892. Shamanism. Moscow: Izvestiia Imperatorskogo obshchestva liubitelei estestvoznaniia, antropologiia i etnografii, 12.
Rasmussen, Knud. 1929. Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos. Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921-1924, vol. 7. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag.
Rasmussen, Susan. 1995. Spirit Possession and Personhood among the Kel Ewey Tuareg.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1998. “Only Women Know Trees: Medicine Women and the Role of Herbal Healing in Tuareg Culture.” Journal of Anthropological Research 54, no. 2: 147-171.
———. 2001. Healing in Community: Medicine, Contested Terrains, and Cultural Encounters among the Tuareg. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey.
Saladin d’Anglure, Bernard. 1994. “From Foetus to Shaman: The Construction of an Inuit Third Sex.” Pp. 82-106 in Amerindian Rebirth. Edited by A. Mills and R. Slobodin. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Siikala, Anne-Leena, and Mihaly Hoppal, eds.
1992. Studies on Shamanism. Helsinki: Finnish Anthropological Society.
Stoller, Paul. 1989. The Taste of Ethnographic Things. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Stoller, Paul, and Cheryl Olkes. 1987. In Sorcery’s Shadow. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tambiah, Stanley. 1990. Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taussig, Michael. 1987. Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Thomas, Keith. 1971. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Turner, Edith. 1996. The Hands Feels It.
DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press.
Turner, Victor. 1967. The Forest of Symbols. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Wedenoja, William. 1989. “Mothering and the Practice of Balm in Jamaica.” Pp. 76—98 in Women as Healers. Edited by Carol McClain. New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press.
MESSIANISM AND SHAMANISM
Strictly speaking, the term messianism, or mes-siah-ism, refers to belief in a coming redeemer, or “messiah.” In its broader, more anthropological usage, messianism refers to new and often radical religious cults and movements that emerge suddenly and revolve around a central (and living) charismatic figure. Messianic movements frequently occur at times of very severe deprivation or community-wide trauma, trauma caused by such factors as foreign conquest and oppression. This connection has suggested to many scholars that such movements constitute a religious and prepolitical response to the oppression and resultant upheaval (e.g., Lanternari 1963; Worsley 1957). Indeed, messianic figures bear prophetic visions of how to free their people from their strife-ridden social and cultural order and replace it with a new one of universal harmony and bliss. They are thus believed to be saviors or liberators with special access to the supernatural. In most cases, the messianic prophet’s vision is also apocalyptic: The world will end in some cataclysm, but those who heed the prophet-mes-siah’s instructions (e.g., obey certain new social rules and perform the right rituals) will be saved and enter a promised land on earth, a terrestrial paradise (Wallis 1943). Messianic movements guided by such a message are often referred to as millenarian, or millennial, deriving from the Christian idea of a messiah (Christ) ushering in a new “millennium” (thousand years) of peace, goodness, and perfect happiness. Messianic and millenarian cults and movements have occurred and continue to occur in all forms of societies, from ancient times to the present. They have frequently appeared
in non-Western indigenous societies in which shamanism is or was prominent (La Barre 1971; 1990b; Wallis 1943).
Like messianism, the term shamanism, or shaman-ism refers to a magico-religious cult that revolves around a charismatic figure—the shaman. And like the messianic prophet, the shaman is believed to be a kind of liberator, though in the role of healer. As such, the shaman frees or protects the individual or community from disease-causing spirit attacks, but not, typically, from actual foreign aggression, oppression, or the ensuing misery of societal collapse, as would the prophet. The shaman is also believed to have special access to the supernatural, and like a prophet, may have visions or significant dreams; but unlike a prophet, the shaman is defined, prototypically, in terms of mastery of ecstatic trances induced by drumming or the rhythmic shaking of a rattle, and in many cases, by hallucinogenic herbs. While in trance, the shaman’s soul journeys to “upper” and “lower” worlds to battle spirits attacking the community or to retrieve a patient’s stolen soul. Spirits might also possess and speak through an entranced shaman, at the shaman’s call. In either case, shamans solicit the support of helper spirits, nature gods, and their ancestors in their battles, offering these beings animal sacrifices and other valuables to ensure their support (Vitebsky 2001).
Thus, whereas shamans are concerned with maintaining the health and stability of their societies and not with changing them, prophets are directly concerned with changing things as they are and offer a vision of a new and different world with a new religious program for getting there. Yet, in shamanic societies undergoing severe social and cultural upheaval, it is often the shaman who becomes a prophet, a “shaman-prophet,” or “shaman-messiah,” and creates a new religious form or movement, even if that “new” form entails a revival of older or even lost traditions. Anthropologist Weston La Barre (1990b) went so far as to argue that shamanism may well have emerged originally in prehistoric hunting and gathering societies as a kind of messianic cult in which shamanprophets offered both healing and new cultural models to cope with ongoing crises over food and deadly aggression by competing groups.
In historic times, messianic and millennial forms of shamanism have been reported from
Siberia to the Americas, where the number and quality of cases is richest, and in Southeast Asia and elsewhere as well. Some are more explicitly political and military in character and may even lead to actual armed rebellion against a foreign power; others are more exclusively religious and expressive, aiming to achieve liberation through magical and spiritual means alone. Still others fall in between. At either extreme, the actual messianic beliefs and practices may tend to be more acculturative (emphasizing foreign religious elements and de-emphasiz-ing the indigenous) or more nativistic (emphasizing indigenous religion and rejecting foreign beliefs and practices) (cf. Fernandez 1964). Although many anthropologists attribute the cause of such sudden new religious forms to exogenous, or external, factors, such as severe natural disasters, the clash of cultures, and social, economic, and political oppression (e.g., Aberle 1970; La Barre 1971; Lanternari 1963; Wallace 1956a), others point to endogenous, or internal, factors, such as a society’s own sociopolitical conflicts and traditional millenarian or messianic ideas and myths (Brown 1991; Clastres 1995; Espindola 1961; Spier 1935).
Messianic Shamanism in Siberia
Marjorie Balzer (1999, 75—98) described two nineteenth-century cases of messianic shamanism in Northwest Siberia that appear to have been responses to oppressive external conditions, though one was more military in character and the other was more expressive, or religious. They both emerged after 1820 among the indigenous Nentsy (Samoyed, Yurak) and Khanty (Ostiak, Ugra) peoples. It was a time of increasing Russian contact and colonization in their area, with stiffer taxation by the czarist government and mounting pressure by the Russian Orthodox Church to Christianize. At the same time, ecological disasters, such as widespread forest fires that devastated the tundra, and a burgeoning poverty further contributed to the breakdown of these tribal peoples’ traditional and relatively free nomadic and egalitarian way of life based on herding and breeding reindeer. As a result, they became increasingly more dependent on Russian grains and products. But during several famines, the grains were withheld, fueling their growing desperation.
Then, in 1825, a very talented, charismatic, and well-known Nentsy shaman, Vavlyo Neni-ang, began preaching about a prophetic vision he had had. He saw his people return to a traditional way of life, and he saw the usually opposing Nentsy and Khanty tribes united in a combined religious, political, and military response to their mutual plight. Within a short time, large numbers of Nentsy and Khanty gathered around Vavlyo, forming a messianic community of more than 400 tents. Vavlyo led his followers in shamanic ritual dances, chanting, and nighttime sacrificial offerings of reindeer to placate local spirits and, plausibly, to liberate them from their condition. He preached that his followers should reclaim their nomadic lives and religion and denounce the life of hired laborers and fishers. They should also withhold payment of taxes and join him in Robin Hood—like raids on the reindeer herds of the wealthy, who were allied to the Russians, to redistribute the herds to their poor and starving people.
In 1839, after many such raids, Vavlyo was imprisoned and exiled. However, after a stunning escape, which followers attributed to his shamanic powers, Vavlyo returned and marched toward the provincial center of Obdorsk with 400—600 armed followers. His plan was to force merchants of the regional market there to lower the prices of Russian goods, increase the value of Native furs, force Taishin, a puppet Khanty “prince” of the Russian government, to distribute the government supplies of grains that had been withheld, and replace Taishin with a Khanty elder of Vavlyo’s choosing to serve as cultural broker with the Russians. Though Vav-lyo was captured and imprisoned en route, a Khanty cohort, the shaman Pani Khodin, continued the movement and its religious and military activities in a much smaller band for another fifteen years (until 1856).
By 1896, Russian colonization and influence had spread to the Vakh river region to the south and was strongly undermining the fundamental values of very poor Khanty peoples, who had been forced into the area and who were surviving on hunting, fishing, and the trade of squirrel skins. Many squandered their meager earnings on alcohol and tobacco, vices tied directly to the Russians. Even very young girls were seen drunk in the villages, and, among adults, smoking and drinking were be
coming common at traditional religious ceremonies held at sacred grove sites. Sexual relations with the Russians were also increasing, leading to the breakdown of traditional kin relations and constituting a major breach of Khanty moral codes. Many believed that such breaches would affect the health of the people as a whole, and indeed, various sicknesses, notably smallpox, were appearing in neighboring regions.
In that year, one of several types of Khanty shamans, a female dream-seer, ulam-verta-ni, had a powerful dream predicting a terrible sickness among her people. She preached that to prevent this cataclysmic epidemic people would have to give up tobacco and alcohol, renew the Khanty moral code regarding sexual relations, and perform ongoing and intensive ceremonies before ancestor shrines at a large number of sacred groves. In each ceremony, they were to execute the most rigorous and most costly form of ritual sacrifice, that of horses (instead of the more common and less valued reindeer). The sacrificed horses were to be offered to obtain the protection of diverse ancestor spirits and celestial gods and to placate disease-causing entities, the Christian devil, and other evil spirits. The shamanic dream-seer soon attracted a large Khanty following from as far away as 100 kilometers. This following included other types of shamans, such as the elta-ku, who directly battled disease-causing spirits in trance, sacrifice specialists, various kinds of healers, and the elders of many Vakh river settlements. All participated in elaborate shamanic seances and sacrificial rites at the numerous ancestor grove sites. The shamans danced, chanted, sacrificed seven horses in each ceremony, and escorted the horses’ souls to the gods and spirits they were offered to. But due to sickness, despair, and the apparently irreversible impact of Russian culture, the movement dwindled in less than a year. (For cases of shaman-prophets and shamanic revivals in post-Soviet Siberia, see Balzer 2002; Fridman 2004.)
Messianic Shamanism in the Americas
In North America, external factors also appeared to be responsible for the development of indigenous messianic movements during and after European and Euro-American colonization, which devastated Native American lands,
forced Indians into reservations, eliminated the huge roaming herds of bison upon which many groups depended, and led to both widespread malnutrition and a series of terrible typhoid and other epidemics. Many Indians died. At the same time, the Indians also lost their political autonomy and suffered from the U.S. government’s campaign to eradicate their languages, customs, and beliefs (Kehoe 1989, 13-40).
In 1870, during the development of these extreme deprivations, the North Paiute Indian shaman, Wodizob, of Nevada, famous for his soul-fetching trance journeys to heal the ill, had a prophetic vision in which he saw the souls of the dead. He said that if the people performed a sacred round dance for their ancestors, a “Ghost Dance,” there would be a great cataclysm in which the white people would vanish, the Great Spirit would return their loved ones who had died, and all would live happily in a paradisiacal land of plenty. Though the movement ended after four years of intensive trance dancing without effect, the Ghost Dance spread throughout California and Oregon (Du Bois 1939).
Then in 1888, Wovoka (“Jack Wilson”), a Northern Paiute “weather doctor” and healer, who had been raised in part by whites and exposed to Christian beliefs, suffered a serious sickness during which he lost consciousness. At the height of his delirium, there occurred earth tremors and a dramatic total eclipse of the sun. The terrified Paiute believed that the world was ending. When it did not and Wovoka regained consciousness, he talked of meeting God in a spiritual journey. God told him that his people must lead a clean, honest life (no fights, no war against whites, no lying, stealing, drinking) and carry out a sacred Ghost Dance. If they obeyed, they would be reunited with their deceased loved ones in a new world, but with no more sickness, old age, or death, and with plenty of game. The whites would be carried away or become one with the Indians. Wo-voka’s Ghost Dance spread to some thirty-five tribes throughout the West. Some variants developed more intensely religious forms, as among the Northern Paiute and Arapaho. Others became more political and potentially military, as among the Sioux, who devised “bulletproof” shirts in preparation for war. The Sioux Ghost Dance ended in the tragic slaughter of Ghost Dancers at Wounded Knee. Most other
Ghost Dances disappeared in time, but some continued into the 1960s (Kehoe 1989; La Barre 1990a).
Though many scholars attribute the emergence of the Ghost Dance movements to external factors, namely Euro-American oppression, others point to internal sources. For instance, according to Leslie Spier (1935), pre-European beliefs among Indians of the Northwest and the Northern Paiute region strongly resembled those of the Ghost Dance. They believed, for instance, in an impending destruction of the world, its renewal, and the “happy day” when the dead would return—all invoked by a round dance led by an inspired leader (Spier 1935, 5). This “Prophet Dance,” as Spier called it, was observed and recorded among various groups, such as the Pacific Coast Salish Indians, as early as 1820, long before the Ghost Dances of 1870 and 1890 and many years before the first trading posts and missionaries in that region (Suttles 1957, 353-358, 382-383). Plausibly, then, the later Ghost Dance prophets drew from these traditional Indian beliefs and practices in their region, and thus their messianic shamanism was not, or not primarily, a creative response to Euro-American colonization.
In regard to the earlier Prophet Dances, some anthropologists, like Spier, have emphasized endogenous causes. They have argued, for instance, that in the politically precarious Indian societies of that area, the Prophet Dance was a kind of cultural mechanism through which needed political leaders could arise, offering new models of how things should be (Suttles 1957, 393). Indeed, although many Prophet Dance leaders were shamans, others were inspired chiefs. Other anthropologists, however, have argued that Western trade and colonizers’ diseases had actually strongly impacted the Indians in those societies before any direct contact with whites. The diseases and the effects of trade had spread into these Indians’ areas and caused crises in their societies, and they responded with the Prophet Dances— pointing back again to external causes (Aberle 1959; Walker 1969).
This debate over internal versus external causes figures prominently in the literature on messianic shamanism in South America. Often cited in the controversy are the astounding messianic movements of the closely related
Tupf and Guarani tribes. During European colonization in the sixteenth century, the Tupi-Guarani populated coastal Brazil, the northwest Amazon region, Paraguay, and nearby areas. Their movements were led by the most revered form of Tupi-Guarani shaman, a male shaman-prophet called the karai (cara^ cara'ibe). Between 1539 and 1549, for instance, ten to twelve thousand Tupi (Tupinamba) of coastal Brazil suddenly left their otherwise sedentary agricultural communities, presumably under the direction and visions of a karai. They traveled westward en masse across the entire continent to the Andes of Peru in search of a terrestrial paradise they called kandire, “the Land-Without-Evil.” Spanish settlers in the Peruvian Andes in 1549 recorded the arrival of some 300 survivors of this extraordinary messianic trek and the Indians’ account of it.
In 1562, the Jesuits stopped a similar messianic exodus of 3,000 Tupi from Bahia on the northeast Brazilian coast, led by two karais in pursuit of the Land-Without-Evil. But in 1609, another karai successfully led an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 Tupi (Potiquara) for more than a thousand miles, from Pernambuco, a state just north of Bahia, to Maranhao in the far north, again following their karai’s visions of the end of the world and a promised land of plenty and immortality. Jesuits, adventurers, and army captains met the massive migration at different points along the way and recorded details of the karai’s vision, message, rules, and rituals. There were many more such migratory forms of messianic shamanism in Brazil, but an even greater number appeared among Guarani groups from Paraguay and nearby areas. All of them headed east to the Brazilian coast in search of the Land-Without-Evil. Such messianic migrations continued through the nineteenth century and into the beginning of the twentieth century (Clastres 1995, 49-57; Me-traux 1941).
What evil were they all fleeing—an evil from without or from within? Dramatic developments in the colonization of the Brazilian coast in the 1530s (just preceding the first recorded migration in 1539-1549) suggest external causes, an evil from without. At that time, sugar mills were founded along the coast, leading to the extensive enslavement of Indians for labor and for widespread sexual
exploitation. At the same time, to boost the Portuguese presence on the coast, King Joao III emptied his jails of murderers and other hardened criminals and sent them to Brazil, where they committed terrible atrocities, particularly against the Indians (Hemming 1978, 35-44).
Plausibly, such external conditions were behind the messianic migrations. But if the Tupi were simply escaping the evil Portuguese and servitude, why would they cross the entire continent to escape them? They could have stopped long before then. According to Helene Clastres and other anthropologists, the movements were rather motivated by religious and political concerns within Tupi-Guarani society. In their model, fundamental Tupi-Guarani beliefs and myths together with the stresses within their power structure (tensions between chiefs and karais) periodically drove karais to draw from their myths and form messianic movements in order to escape internal con-flicts—thus pointing to internal causes, an evil within. The Tupi and Guarani believed in a central high god, Tupa, who was actually a god of destruction (not of creation) and intimately tied to their ostensibly pre-European apocalyptic myths about the world’s future destruction and the quest for the Land-Without-Evil. These beliefs would explain their major preoccupation with these themes and why so many disparate Tupi and Guarani tribes from northeast Brazil to the northwest region of the Amazon and Paraguay held virtually the same myths and exhibited the same kinds of messianic migrations periodically, as noted by chroniclers early in the colonial period (Clastres 1995; cf. Thomas 1988). (For other cases in North America, see Wallace 1956a; Thornton 1993; and for South America, see Brown 1991; Hugh-Jones 1997; Wright and Hill 1992.)
Patric V. Giesler
See also: Ghost Dance and Prophet Dance;
Siberian Shamanism
References and further reading:
Aberle, David F. 1959. “The Prophet Dance and Reactions to White Contact.” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 15: 74-83.
———. 1970. “A Note on Relative Deprivation Theory as Applied to Millenarian and Other Cult Movements.” Pp. 209-214 in Millennial Dreams in Action. Edited by Sylvia
L. Thrupp. New York: Schocken Books.
Original edition, The Hague: Mouton, 1962.
Balzer, Marjorie Mandelstam. 1999. The Tenacity of Ethnicity: A Siberian Saga in Global Perspective. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
———. 2002. “Healing Failed Faith? Contemporary Siberian Shamanism.” Anthropology and Humanism 26, no. 2: 134-149.
Brown, Michael F. 1991. “Beyond Resistance: A Comparative Study of Utopian Renewal in Amazonia.” Ethnohistory 38, no. 4: 388-413.
Clastres, Helene. 1995. The Land without Evil: Tup^Guaram Prophetism. Translated from the French by Jacqueline Grenez Brovender.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Originally published as La terre sans mal: Leprophetisme tupi-guarani. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1975.
Du Bois, Cora. 1939. The 1870 Ghost Dance.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Espindola, Julio Cesar. 1961. “Proposito del Mesianismo en las Tribus Guarani” [The Purpose of Messianism in the Guarani Tribes]. America Ind^gena 21, no. 4: 307-325.
Fernandez, James W. 1964. “African Religious Movements—Types and Dynamics.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 2, no. 4: 531-549.
Fridman, Eva Jane Neumann. 2004. Sacred Geography: Shamanism among the Buddhist Peoples of Russia. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.
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Hugh-Jones, Stephen. 1997. “Shamans, Prophets, Priests, and Pastors.” Pp. 32-75 in Shamanism, History, and the State.
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Wallis, Wilson D. 1943. Messiahs: Their Role in Civilization. Washington, DC: American Council on Public Affairs.
Worsley, Peter. 1957. The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of “Cargo” Cults in Melanesia. London: Margibbon and Kee.
Wright, Robin M., and Jonathan D. Hill. 1992. “Venancio Kamiko: Wakunai Shaman and Messiah.” Pp. 257-286 in Portals of Power: Shamanism in South America. Edited by E. Jean Matteson Langdon and Gerhard Baer. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
MUSEUM COLLECTIONS
The material history of shamanism today exists primarily in the museums of the world’s developed nations. The oldest collections exist in the Ethnographic Museum of the Americas in Madrid, the Russian Museum of Ethnography and the Kunstkammer Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and the British Museum in London. The largest African collections are held in the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium and the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin.
Collections consisting of objects relating to shamanism, ritual, divination, and healing were established during a colonial era extending from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries. These objects were obtained as curiosities, booty, and ethnographic specimens and subsequently gathered as collections in faraway cities like Oslo, New York, Chicago, Paris, Seattle, and Ottawa. Many museum collections, such as those of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Field Museum in Chicago, were developed by private or museum sponsorship, motivated by civic boosters eager to establish collections of ethnographic importance. As a result, many objects, some still integral to cultural practice and heritage, were acquired by ethically questionable means. Other museums, most notably the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Turvuren, Belgium, developed their massive collections forcibly, often at the expense of cultures and lives.
Though many museums were complicit in the weakening of shamanism and indigenous cultures, paradoxically their collections now exist as testaments to the widespread and multifaceted heritage of shamanism. To be thankful yet regretful is the part of the complicated colonial legacy that all Westerners share today. Mindful of their colonial legacy, many museums have subsequently developed an awareness of context, meaning, and sacredness for objects within their collections. Similarly, the rise in cultural awareness and political empowerment of many indigenous cultures has spurred the development of regional museums in places like Ulan Ude in Siberia and Pusan in Korea. These museums, operated and curated by indigenous people and dedicated to a local culture, are part of a broader movement of cultural reclamation, whereby cultures are recovering and reimagin
ing their heritage. Central to cultural recovery efforts has been the reexamination of spiritual and shamanistic traditions.
In turn, many museums have aspired to more accurately identify objects, their context, and use. However, due to incomplete or vague collection data, the identification of many shamanistic, ritual, or cultural objects remains imprecise. A recent exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum in Ottawa, for instance, identified an ancient Chinese figure simply as a “figure” rather than as an image of Nuogong, the father of Nuo—a complex shamanistic spiritual system based on Daoism—who traditionally had to be present to oversee each shamanistic ceremony. Similarly, many of the ritual objects, regalia, masks, talismans, and figurines located in the world’s museums have been vaguely identified by their collectors and often ascribed, wittingly and unwittingly, with misleading information because of the association of an object with “pagan” or “heathen” significance or ceremonies. As a consequence many objects remain incorrectly identified or generally described as “ritual” rather than “shamanistic.” A visitor or researcher should be mindful of less than obvious shamanistic connections; in fact, most ritual objects should be viewed as being associated with shamanistic practice, even though not specifically identified as such.
It is impossible to note all museums containing objects relating to the world’s diverse shamanistic heritage. Instead, this entry will cite major and unique collections, which will hopefully serve as guideposts for the reader’s further investigations.
The Russian Museum of Ethnography and the Kunstkammer Museum, both of which are located in Saint Petersburg, contain the world’s largest and most comprehensive collections of Siberian and Far Eastern shamanistic objects. The second floor of the Russian Museum of Ethnography holds several thousand ritual objects relating to the wide variety of ethnic groups contained within Russia, a nation that accounts for one-fifth of the earth’s land surface. Under the sponsorship of Czar Alexander III, the museum collected objects from more than 150 ethnic groups to proclaim the breadth and depth of Russian culture; under the Soviets, ethnic diversity was used to demonstrate the triumph of Communist ideology. The main part of this ethnographic collection was ob-
Nanai shaman (Siberia). Russian Ethnographic Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. (Courtesy of Eva Jane Neumann Fridman)
tained in the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Anthropomorphic images, shaman’s coats, ritual costumes, drums, and masks from Russia’s vast cultural landscape are represented. Objects from the Baltic States, the Volga, Caucasus, Alvic, Byelorussia, Amur, Ukrainian Crimea, Daghestan, Ural, and the Kazakstan regions are included. The museum also has a valuable photo collection and an extraordinary representation of ritual regalia from Siberia, Central Asia, and the Far East, which includes the Yakut, Buryat, Khakass, Tungus, and Tuva people.
The Kunstkammer Museum was founded in 1704 by Peter the Great and is the oldest state museum in Russia. Like the Russian Museum of Ethnography, this museum holds several excellent examples relating to Siberian shamanism. Because of its early founding, it also holds several objects connected with pre-Christian
shamanistic and spiritual practices in Russia. Animist and pre-Christian Slavic and European traditions are also represented with such objects as birch-bark masks representing tree spirits. Because Peter the Great was intent on establishing a museum of international repute, the museum also has several ritual objects from East Asia and Southeast Asia, Africa, the Americas, Australia, and Oceania.
Established in 1857, The Ethnographic Museum of Norway occupies the top three floors of the University Museum of Cultural Heritage, University of Oslo at Tuilinlokka, in the center of Oslo. The Ethnographic Museum collection numbers more than 45,000 objects and has permanent exhibitions from a number of regions of the world: the Arctic, North and South America, South and East Asia, and Africa.
Norway’s historical and political interests in the circumpolar north motivated its extensive Arctic and Subarctic collection during the early part of the twentieth century. Museum-sponsored ethnographers and explorers came into early contact with several cultural groups in northern Canada and Siberia; Roland Amundsen gathered the world’s largest collection of objects from the Netsilik and Chuckchee people. The Netsilik collection, with over 900 items, is the museum’s largest from a single culture, and includes many shamanistic and ritual objects. 0rjan Olsen collected extensively from the Tuvan people, reindeer herders from southern Siberia and Mongolia, who have a long and developed history of shamanism. Several rare objects, such as shaman headpieces with reindeer antlers, are included in the collection, as are ritual items that reveal the unique blending of animist and Buddhist influences. Gustav Holm’s collection from East Greenland includes several spirit carvings used by shaman as mnemonics and for divination. The Adolf Dat-tan collection of the Orochi and Nanai people of the Amur River region offers remarkable examples of artifacts connected with shamanistic practice from people living along the southern Pacific coast of Siberia. The shamanistic artifacts in this collection illustrate the confluence of Siberian, Chinese, and Tungus-Manchu cultures. The variety and depth of the museum’s vast collections offer an opportunity to compare the highly developed shamanistic traditions of Siberia and the Russian Far East.
The Ethnographic Museum of the Americas in Madrid holds the largest and finest collection of shaman- and ritual-related objects from the Caribbean and Central and South America. The museum also includes objects gathered from the Tlingit, Alutiiq, and Yupik of Alaska. The museum holds thousands of objects, gathered primarily in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries; many objects also were collected during the era of Columbus, constituting one of the earliest collections of ethnographic and shamanistic artifacts in the world. Early, often pre-Columbian objects offer unique insights into the world that existed before contact with Europeans, a world organized by indigenous spiritual belief systems, ritual cycles, and shamanistic practice. The collection is extensive, if not overwhelming, in its variety, wealth, and detail. The early acquisition date of some of the objects has, however, also made them difficult to identify and classify.
The collection includes objects from the Plains Indians of the American Southwest and Colorado River areas. Hopi Kachina dolls, representing ancestral spirits and ritual objects from the Maya of Chiapas and Guatemala are prominent in the collection. The Huichol of northern Mexico are also well represented; the spiritual perspective that still makes them a nation of shamans permeates all objects with ritual, making the collection of special interest. Other objects in the collection are the only material testaments of several now-extinct indigenous groups.
Because of the wide and early sphere of influence of the Spanish, the collection also includes a diversity of items—headpieces, masks, ritual drums, implements, and shrunken heads—from the Caribbean, Peru, and Amazonia, dating from the early part of the eighteenth century. Ritual and spiritual objects from the Araucanian culture in Chile can be compared to masks and regalia worn by the healers from a variety of Andean indigenous groups. The collection also includes a surprising number of objects from Melanesia, Micronesia, Malaysia, Hawaii, the Philippines, and even Africa and China. Of particular note are the spirit figures of the dead from the Ifugao people of the northern Philippine island of Luzon. The Ifugao people have a pantheon of gods and believe the universe consists of five regions, which their shamans call
upon: earth, sky world, Underworld, downstream region, and upstream region.
The Royal Museum for Central Africa was organized in 1897 in order to arouse public support for the Congo Free State, then the private domain of the notorious and despotic colonizer, King Leopold II of Belgium. The exhibition was a success and the Musee du Congo Belge was built in Tervuren, outside Brussels, in 1910. In 1960, after the Congo (later known as Zaire; currently the Democratic Republic of the Congo) gained independence, the museum adopted its present name. The museum entranceway includes allegorical or “ethnographic” sculptures representing the philosophy and perspective in vogue during the colonial era. Maps and miscellaneous documents and objects that belonged to Henry Morton Stanley and other explorers help visitors to follow the development of European knowledge about Africa. A number of displays also reveal how Africans perceived the “white man” who settled on their land. Today, the museum is known for its proactive stance, encouraging intercultural dialogue and development by undertaking cooperation with African partner institutions.
The museum collection of ethnographic objects from central Africa is unsurpassed. In many instances Belgium’s initial forays into the vast and largely inaccessible central African region represented initial contact with indigenous groups. As a consequence, like the Madrid collection, Tervuren contains many excellent examples of precontact, pre-missionary existence. The collection of artistic, spiritual, and material objects from central Africa is grouped together by cultural, ethnic or geographical zone. These zones are generally located in the territory that now forms the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Republic of Congo, Northern Angola, Rwanda, and Burundi. The Ethnography Section has a collection of around 180,000 objects, most of which were collected on site by colonial administrators, missionaries, and scientists after 1885 and subsequently supplemented by donations. The collection includes possibly the world’s most extensive collection of African masks and statues, many of which were used in the ritual practice that was central to everyday African life. Some of the collection’s most famous objects relate directly to healing rituals, divination, and shamanistic practice. Since 1961 the
museum has extended its field of study to include West Africa, North Africa, East Africa, and southern Africa. The most recent East Africa and southern Africa collections already feature more than 14,000 objects. The museum also includes several thousand objects from the Americas and Oceania and a photographic library of almost 13,000 archive photographs preserved on glass plates; the collection has a supplement of 40,000 field photographs, including many relevant to ritual, divination, and healing practices.
The two largest collections of objects related to shamans, spirit, and ritual in the United States reside at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City and at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). The NMAI is located at the George Gustav Heye Center in New York City and has a Cultural Resource Center in Maryland; a major new facility, located on the national mall in Washington, D.C., is scheduled for completion in 2004. The collections of both museums were founded on numerous sponsored ethnographic, archaeological, and anthropological expeditions, and they include material objects and extensive written and photographic documentation. The NMAI and the AMNH both have extensive collections of objects relating to shamanistic practice in North, Central, and South America. In addition to its impressive Americas collection, the AMNH also has holdings from Africa, Asia, and the North Pacific region.
The British Museum in London has possibly the best representation of ritual and shaman objects from the ancient worlds of Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia, India, and China. The former colonial reach of Britain, combined with its long history of scholarly inquiry, has shaped the British Museum’s broad-ranging collections of shaman-related objects, making it ideal for comparative and historical insights. The collection holdings include ancient Egyptian amulets, ritual mirrors from Tibet, fetish figures from the Congo, and Siberian shamans’ drums and aprons.
Among large museum collections of shaman-related objects, a few others are especially worthy of note: Chicago’s Field Museum has an exceptional and detailed Tlingit and American Northwest coast collection; the Samchuk City Museum in Pusan, South Korea, offers a com
prehensive display of items relating to Korean shamanism; and the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin has a broad range of pre-Columbian objects from Central and South America, and strong Africa, Asia, and Oceania collections.
Smaller, but no less notable collections of shaman-related objects can be found at a variety of museums around the world, including the National Museum of Denmark, the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology, the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa, the Thomas Burke Memorial Washington State Museum at the University of Washington, the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks, the University Museum of Anthropology in Philadelphia, the Whitney Museum in Valdez, Alaska, the Sakhalin Regional Museum in Russia, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard, and the Royal Ontario Museum. Museums sponsored by the recently independent autonomous republics of Buryat and Sakha, located in Ulan Ude and Yakutsk respectively, offer fine examples of shamanistic representation from an indigenous perspective. The State Museum of the Buryat People includes an impressive open-air display—authentically re-created under the supervision of Evenki shamans—of a traditional shaman’s camp, with hundreds of spirit carvings symbolically diagramming their cosmology. An excellent collection of old Evenki shaman costumes and artifacts can also be seen in the ethnological museum in Irkutsk, Buryat Republic.
Innovative projects relating to shamanism, such as those sponsored by Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (CUMAA), are greatly adding to our knowledge of shamanistic practice. Recognizing the limits of collecting sacred objects out of context, the museum sponsored a practicing Pachyu shaman from Nepal to conduct research and collect sacred materials for a museum exposition. The understanding and documentation of objects in context, how they interrelate and are part of a ritual complex, is an important advancement in the relationship between shamanism and museums. Issues such as storage, respect for secrecy, display, handling, preservation of sacredness, and an appreciation of multiple levels of meanings and function of the objects, mark a significant development in shamanistic studies. The CUMAA exposition
of Pachyu spiritual material also included a public event to raise a greater awareness of social, political, and environmental issues surrounding and challenging traditional shamanistic practice today. Similar initiatives have been undertaken by other museums as correctives to historical inaccuracies and exploitation. These efforts to foster understanding of shamanism from an indigenous perspective and these examples of proactive participation in its preservation are encouraging and suggest that the museums of the world are evolving to give shamanism the informed and respected place it deserves.
Thomas Riccio
See also: Colonialism and Shamanism;
Ethnocentrism and Shamanism; Yupik and Inupiaq Masks
References and further reading:
Burssens, Herman. 1962. Yanda-Beelden En Mani-Sekte Bij De Azande (Centraal Afrika).
2 vols. Tervuren: Musee royal de 1’Afrique centrale.
Disselhoff, Hans Dietrich, and Sigvald Linne.
1966. The Art Of Ancient America: Civilizations of Central and South America. New York: Greystone Press.
Fienup-Riordan, Ann. 1996. The Living Tradition of Yup’ik Masks: Agayuliyararput (Our Way of Making Prayer). Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Fitzhugh, William, and Aron Crowell, eds.
1988. Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Fitzhugh, William, and Susan Kaplan. 1982. Inua: Spirit World of the Bering Sea Eskimo. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Gonen, Amiram, ed. 1993. The Encyclopedia of the Peoples of the World. New York: Henry Holt.
Kasfir, Sidney L., ed. 1988. West African Masks and Cultural Systems. Tervuren: Musee royal de l’Afrique centrale.
Kubler, George. 1991. Esthetic Recognition of Ancient Amerindian Art. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Lapiner, Alan C. 1976. Pre-Columbian Art of South America. New York: H. N. Abrams.
Mauldin, Barbara. 1999. Masks of Mexico. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press.
Roberts, Mary N. and A. F. Roberts. 1996. The Shape of Belief: African Art from The Dr.
Michael R. Heide Collection. San Francisco:
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Willett, Frank. 1993. African Art. New York: Thames and Hudson.
MUSIC IN WORLD SHAMANISM
Music is one of the core features that cohere and identify the practice of shamanism worldwide. From its incipient forms in prehistoric times to contemporary freelance simulations in popular culture, shamanism has almost always relied on creative manipulations and extensions of sound. In most cases, sound and sound objects constitute the essential implements and channels of the shaman’s multifaceted spiritual journey. Musical instruments can also, for example, be temporarily transformed into a shaman’s divination mirror, through which the shaman has vivid visual encounters and communicates with disembodied forces. Through ingenious and creative performance techniques, sound and movement patterns become potent forces capable of generating multiple and shifting sites of meaning, affect, and symbolic association. The shaman’s assistants and audiences are usually indispensable in achieving the desired musical momentum, as well as the mental and physical settings necessary for a successful staging of shamanism.
The particulars of local culture, ecology, history, and belief system are also influential in determining the categories and varieties of sound and sound objects that are preferred and assigned meaning. The similarities and divergences in general performance practice, types of musical instruments, sounds, and powers associated with these in the contexts of world shamanism are thus predicated, in part, on extramusical factors, and in part on common tendencies in local musical traditions and frames of interpretation. Certain names or terms associated with a shaman are sometimes good indicators of the centrality of music both in the shaman’s life and in his or her ritual performances. Consider, for example problems—and hence multiple roles—associated with defining the Turkmen bakhshy (poet-musician-shaman), or consider the designation “NEEB” in Miao
(Yunnan) shamanism, which refers both to the shamans’ tools or objects and to the range of musical instruments employed.
Shamans creatively explore extant and innovative instruments and sounds to enhance theatrical display and serve clinical goals (Charles 1953, 95—122). The preferred instruments are usually an integral part of the shaman’s tools, armory, or costume.
The aesthetic, strategic, and spiritual import of music in shamanism from ancient times to now is underscored also by the shaman’s symbolic and metamusical commentaries, as indicated in the following excerpt from the shaman’s song no. 1 of the “Nine Songs” of Ancient China:
Now the sticks are raised, the drums are struck,
To beats distanced and slow the chanters gently sing
Then to the ranks of reed-organ and zither make loud reply.
The Spirit [shaman] moves proudly in his splendid gear.
(Waley 1973, 23)
General Stylistic Features
There is a predilection for hybrid sources of sound, including the familiar and unusual, in almost all reported cases of shamanism. While the preferred corpus of music and sound instruments derives mainly from existing or local inventory of sound, a wide range of highly artificial sounds and unusual performance practices are employed. For example: falsetto, whistling, ventriloquism, nasal sound, the cry of a baby, and imitation of nature or animal sounds; unpitched sound types such as the plosive sounds that accompany the ritual expelling of a liquid from the mouth; and a range of other “noise” types. The literature pertaining to music in shamanism, therefore, often employs the terms “noise,” “timbre,” “acoustic effects,” and “soundscape” as a statement on the complex and yet innovative musical features associated with shamanism, as seen in the following report:
The spiritual function of Tuvan music is especially clear in relation to shamanism. The shaman sets up a soundscape using the natu
ral setting: bird calls, rustling breezes, voices of domestic animals, and various other sounds which, though deliberately produced, can hardly be called musical. Most of these come from the costume. On top of this soundscape comes the rhythm of the drum and the melody of the algysh, or poetic chant. (Van Deusen 1996, 3—4, quoted in Hoppal 1997, 123-136)
The importance of timbral and acoustic variety is corroborated in examples from the Malay Peninsula:
A prerequisite for instrumental invocation and intreaty of these spiritual substances among some Orang Asli groups is the perceived existence of living tonalities, with an array of distinct timbral consistencies: the souls of each wild animal, plant, rock, or the earth contain a sound characterized by distinct timbres, tonal rows, melodic contours, vocal ornamentations, rhythms, and other formal musical parameters.... Players can
reach the appropriate experiential realm through performances on musical instruments alone, including the mouth organ, the nose flute, the transverse flute, or the tube zither. They blow or pluck their instruments, improvising upon predetermined parameters and tempering their sound with thickly tim-bred interludes. (Roseman 1998, 560-589)
There are, however, moments or practices in which silence is prescribed (Charles 1953, 95-122).
In addition, these sounds are often closely identified with particular spirits (or a class of spirits, which include ancestral, nature, and other disembodied spirits). Due to this close association, the sounds usually take on various symbolic and extramusical associations, often resulting in special affect and emotional encounters. For example, a nasal or falsetto may be employed to attract, acknowledge, and represent the “physical”—even virtual—or dreadful presence of the spirit of an ancestral spirit. A particular song, chant, or rhythmic formula may thus invite or indicate the presence of a particular spirit. Musical instruments such as varieties of bells (clapper-bells, as in Anlo-Ewe exorcism [Avorgbedor 2000, 9-24], or seven small bells known as baul, as practiced in
hanyang kut ritual music of shamans in Korea) are “believed to bring the attention of the spirits” (Lee 1981, 88-91).
Repetition of a line, word, verse or short rhythmic pattern (in lead voice or accompaniment) is a common feature in shamanistic seances. According to Aaron Watson, “In some cases such states might be induced by repetitive drumbeats, but it is also likely that the nature of some sounds, especially those with low frequencies, might influence transcendental experience” (Watson 2001, 178-192 [speaking of “sound and trance”]). Although many research reports in psychology and religious studies tend to label extreme repetition as among the shaman’s resources for facilitating trance states, there is no firm evidence on the precise relationship between repetition and the inducement of trance in shamanism. (See also Rouget 1985 for detailed discussions of shifting relationships between music and trance.) As indicated in the following example, some of the musical traits often identified with music in shamanistic ritual can sometimes be underused, reversed, or absent: “the voice of the shamaness had not become louder, she did not raise it at all, her recitation did not even become faster. And, in spite of that, the atmosphere was filled with tension” (Kenin-Lopsan 1997, 126).
Creating Musical Coherence/Meaning through the Agency of the Supernatural An ability to weave or demonstrate supernatural and learned musical skills and talent is another universal characteristic, as confirmed also among the Temiar of Malay: “A spirit gives a set melody in her dream, along with some central images, vocabulary, and lyrics. But the singer extemporaneously expands upon the text in performance” (Roseman 2001, 109-129). The centrality of music in mediumship or shamanism is stressed further in examples where the spirits actually “correct mistakes” in the music, thus performing the role of a music and dance teacher, temporarily. There are many legends worldwide that are associated with the “correct” and “exact” performance or repetition of music in specific rituals or shamanistic sessions, and mistakes often bear grave consequences, both for the performer and for the ritual as a whole: “In certain ceremonial songs it is required that a song be repeated if there is the
slightest mistake in its rendition” (Eagle 1997, 108). Local notions or beliefs associated with aspects of music in shamanism thus include prescriptions and proscriptions, which are designed to cohere musical performance and to ensure ritual integrity and efficacy. During her research on shamanism and music among the Kutenai, Norma McLeod was advised by her informant “not to play them [recordings] indiscriminately, as someone might disappear” (McLeod 1971, 83—101, note 16). The common and supernatural powers associated with music and musical instruments are thus best illustrated in contexts of shamanism.
Depending on the level of the shaman’s competence, the specific context, and the nature of spirits involved in a shamanistic session with active music making, a session could last throughout a whole night, a day, or several days. The quantity and duration of musical activities engaged could be considerable. For example, “The shamans, as told me months later, hit the drum until four o’clock in the morning before chini began to shout out the names of her gods” (Kendall 1995, 17—58). The extended performance of music is also seen in epic genres that either accompany or have their roots in shamanism, as employed in Asian, North American, Pacific and Oceanian societies. In sub-Saharan African societies the epic is less prominent in shamanistic sessions, but extended music making or “all-night” music and dance sessions are often the norm (Beattie and Middleton 1969; Friedson 1996; Ijzermans 1995, 245-274).
The general importance of music in the efficacy and efficient structuring of shamanistic sessions is summed up in examples from the Lower Kutenai Indians of Northern Idaho, who employ particular songs to put the shaman into trance and particular songs to bring him out of it (McLeod 1971, 83-101). Similarly, in a necromancy ritual known as kuchiyose performed by blind female spirit mediums in the Aomori Province of Honshu Island of Japan the accompanying music includes yobikotoba, the lyrical incantation to call the spirits of the dead, and okurikotoba, the incantation that sends the spirits back into the afterworld (Mamiya 1987, 45-51; see also Lee 1981, 127-128 for similar descriptions for Korean shamanistic rituals for the dead).
Special circumstances could, however, redefine or limit the type, quality, and quantity of
music privileged. For example, there was a near-total absence of music in shamanism in Vietnam due to proscriptions by the Vietnamese Communist Party from the 1950s to the 1960s, although “some vocal forms were still used secretly” (Norton 2000, 75-97). Even our modern sprawling and easily congested urban spaces bear important implications for continuity, change, and adaptation in the forms, meaning, and quality of music in contemporary shamanism: “Formerly loud percussion music was a common and frequent feature of shamans’ houses, now they reside in highrise apartments and practice in other locations” (Seo 2000, 175-617). The shifting of type and quantity of music in shamanism is also indicated in the following observations: “When mansubaji is sung for chongshin (invited spirits), the principal kangshinmu plays the bell tree. But when mansubaji is sung for miscellaneous spirits during twitchon kori at the end of the ritual, the pangul (bell tree) is not used” (Seo 2001, 113-114).
Role of Movement, Audience, and Accessories
Although shamans are musical and dance experts in many ways, they are also aided by assistants, who may also serve as apprentices. General audiences, when present, are usually allowed some form of musical participation, depending on the local practice and norms governing shamanism and the music involved. Music in world shamanism cuts across several performance genres, including song, chant, verbal formulae or incantation, and instrumental accompaniment. The shaman-dancer-musician can be either male or female, and the focus on a particular gender may shift over time. (Among the Tlingit and Warao, shamans are mostly men; they are mostly women among the Mapuche.)
The overall importance of music, dance, costume, and special ritual objects in world shamanism is also well captured in studies that focus on iconographies, especially rock art, as illustrated in, for example, The Archaeology of Shamanism (Price 2001).Walter Andritzky’s study on shamanism in Peru (Andritzky 1989) and Sung Lee’s Korean examples (Lee 1981) include, among other iconographic details, the importance of dance and musical instruments.
Musical Training
Since shamanism often subsumes other forms of spiritism and ritualistic practices, the variety or quantity of music involved in shamanism varies also according to the interests, training, and musical demands of the ancillary practices. Training and apprenticeship are related common features of shamanism; in most cases they are critical to the successful establishment of clientele and expertise. Although detailed accounts of the level and intensity of musical training vary, the general competence of the shaman seems to be closely linked with the special or acquired musical skills. There are three main sources of such skills: exposure to musical practice in the general local culture, skills and repertoire acquired during novicehood or apprenticeship, and a body of skills and repertoire (and even musical instruments) that are attributed to supernatural sources (i.e., received and taught by spirits through dreams, visions, and magical or ritual transference of such skills and repertoire from an adept or a spirit being). Training in music includes learning the “proper” techniques and manners of recitation, chanting, singing, performing on musical instruments (rhythm and tone production), ability to accompany oneself, ability to memorize extended song texts and related incantations, and ability to dance, which is complementary to the musical skills. Occasionally, a shaman may not have a good voice, or impressive musical and dramaturgical skills may be lacking. For example, among the Anlo-Ewe, the author observed that shamans do not usually engage in elaborate music making, in contradistinction to other ritual and religious activities in which music and dance play a significant role. In such contexts, the shaman is careful to minimize the incidence of music and related arts in subtle ways without damaging the overall efficacy of shamanistic rituals and personal reputation. In general the success of a seance is, therefore, predicated partly on appropriate skills and proper enactment of musical moments and movement patterns, and partly on the overall dramaturgical skills and ritual expertise of the shaman.
One of the most elaborate discussions of the structure, content, and overall significance of music in shamanism is presented by Maria
Kongju Seo in her doctoral dissertation, “Ritual Music of Hanyang Kut by Spirit-Possessed Shamans in Korea” (2000). The importance of music in the training and practices of the Korean shaman (kangshinmu) is summarized by Seo as follows:
In Korea, the first moment of kangshin (spirit possession) marks the beginning of the musical training required of a neophyte kangshin-mu (spirit-possessed shaman) to become a ritual specialist. They learn songs from the vast repertoires of mugyong (incantations) and muga (ritual songs), which may last several hours each. Musical competence determines what type of kangshinmu one will become.... Musicianship divides Seoul area
shamans into two large groups: Chonnae and ch’ongs<ng mudang. Chonnae are those who devote themselves to divination and smallscale rituals where no songs and dances are required, while ch’ongswng mudang are musically talented performers who officiate at large-scale rituals by singing and dancing....
Musically talented kangshinmu are in great demand.... Kangshinmu must learn to play
percussion instruments such as the ching (gong) or chek<m (cymbals). (Seo 2000, 93-94)
Some amount of self-training is also possible, as indicated in the case of shamans who purchase and learn from published song texts or audio and audiovisual recordings, and in many cases there seem to be no particular prescriptions for order and rules for learning music. According to an 1840 report, “a shaman who wished to summon the spirits was obliged to practice alone for many months in the wilderness, rehearsing his songs and dances and specific drum rhythms to perfection” (Veniaminof 1840, 41; quoted in Johnston 1992).
Shamans often undergo an informal apprenticeship, living in the house of a master shaman. Contemporary cultural trends and government policies have, however, encouraged the institutionalization of shamanistic traditions, as well as the professionalization and formal training of shamans, as exemplified in Korea’s Musok Pojonhoe Preservation Association, which was established in 1988.
Musical Instruments and
Symbolism in Shamanism
The natural resources, traditions, individual creativity, beliefs, and demands of specific rituals influence the selection and use of specific instruments in shamanism. The notion of a “musical instrument” is therefore constrained, in part, by these sources of influence and, in part, by the observer’s (or analyst’s) categories or preconceived notions about what constitutes a musical instrument. First, the wide range of musical instruments encountered in world shamanism falls generally under the traditional main categories proposed by Hornbostel and Sachs: aerophones (winds), chordophones (strings), membranophones (drums, skinned), idiophones (percussion varieties), etc. (Hornbostel and Sachs 1961, 3—29). Most of the sound objects employed in world shamanism, however, support the findings of recent studies that highlight difficulties in identifying and hence classifying a musical instrument; they also emphasize the importance of cultural and contextual data that would challenge and open up the Hornbostel-Sachs system of classification. As shown in the examples cited in this essay, a comprehensive inventory of sound instruments employed in world shamanism certainly presents additional challenges to organologists (i.e., those involved in the scientific study and classification of musical instruments).
The importance of bells, drums (of various shapes and sizes, including water drums), and meshed or enmeshed shakers motivate almost all the authors on the subject of music and shamanism to conclude that percussion instruments are prominent. For example, a case study from contemporary Japan observes:
During the kamitsuke ritual, sutras and ritual formulae are intoned against the background of a boisterous din produced from a variety of percussion instruments, transforming the ritual site into a sacred space. The traditional “seven instruments” include catalpa bows, priests’ staves (shakujo), large and small gongs, large and small bells, and drums. Together, these percussion instruments and chanting voices transform the ritual site into a sacred space of sound. (Kawamura 1994)
Despite the emphasis on percussion, archaeological evidence (Basilov 1992, 77—100) and contemporary practices of shamanism show a wide variety of instruments (including stringed, wind, etc.) as regular members of the shaman’s “orchestra,” depending on local practices.
Musical instruments are commonly employed to heighten the mystical and symbolic associations often desired in shamanism. The instruments are as varied as the fascinating array of sounds that are found in world shamanism. Various categories of instruments have been represented, even in a single context:
Many theatrical properties are used for sound effects, like rattles, trumpets, and drums. A sort of crude violin is played by the Kazak shaman. Mongol trumpets are made from thigh bones of maidens, and drums from girls’ and boys’ skulls. The drums are painted green and decorated with bright ribbons embroidered with the eight emblems of lamassery sacrifice. The Yakut drum is oval, with various protuberances that act as resonators and symbolize ears, chin, and horns. Among the Tungus, the drum may be thought of as the shaman’s reindeer. (Charles 1953, 95—122)
One of the best examples showing the symbolic representation and interpretation of a shaman’s drum is the one reported among the Magar shamans of Nepal, in regard to the construction and use of the double-headed frame drum; the following is a thirteen-point English summary:
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1. Three-stage construction process: selection of wood, construction of frame, membrane attachment and consecration of the drum (consummated in specific temporal spaces)
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2. Prayers, offerings (blood of poussin poured on drum in final rite), chants, and trance accompany the searching and discovery of appropriate construction materials
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3. Chants or epic narratives that correspond with or accompany specific stages and type of construction materials
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4. Construction and founding of a new frame drum usually is linked with the initiation of a novice shaman
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5. Discarded skin fragments are buried, and the raw hide of a wild dog is regarded as impure cadaver whose spirit must be tempered
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6. Symbolic paintings and fingerprints in white, astrological images, geometrical images of animals and fishes, and abstract images are integral to the design and construction
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7. Procedures for repairing the drum follow those observed during a new construction
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8. During the construction process, the drum traverses both human and spiritual worlds
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9. Shaman looks into the drum like a mirror 10. The drum is silenced and hung up for nine days
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11. Irregular beats on the drum imitate sounds of animals and are used in trances
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12. Noise is produced on the drum to scare malevolent spirits
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13. The frame drum is one of the shaman’s protective instruments or armor; it also serves as a vehicle for transporting the dead into the underworld (Oppitz 1990, 79—95; condensed from the French)
In shamanistic and other ritual performances worldwide the symbolic, abstract, and decorative are often fused in the design, construction, and performance of musical instruments, as indicated in two separate volumes of essays devoted to musical instruments and symbolism. Such multiple features or conceptions speak multivocally of power, prestige, skill, competence, and ritual efficacy, which are important concerns in shamanism. The symbolic and cosmological orientations of the shaman’s drum are further explained in the practice of tracing the musical skills of shamans (i.e., as drummer and singer) to divine origins. In special states or dreams, Shamans frequently receive not only their musical instruments but also special songs and necessary musical skills. For example, among the Mapuche, “each machi [shaman] receives her drum in her dreams from supernatural beings, who also teach her how to play it and paint its membrane” (Grebe 1978, 84—106).
Symbolism and musical details are usually a unified consideration in shamanism, as stated earlier. The spirits are usually assigned or identified by their favorite pieces and melodic or rhythmic patterns, in addition to those highly
artificial sounds discussed earlier. A one-, two-, or three-stringed instrument, for example, could indicate the presence of a particular spirit, as in the case of the Korean two-stringed haeg<m. In Hausa bori cult seances a particular song is played on the one-stringed goge to welcome a particular spirit; as practiced in the Malay Peninsula, a three-stringed rebab is played by the Temiar shaman’s ritual pair, min-duk, during a seance:
While the vocal music shows the relationship between people (or between people and spirits), the instrumental interludes function as transitions into altered states.... Then the
oscillating two-note figure played by the fiddle in the lowest part of the ensemble’s tonal range accelerates and comes to a crescendo, and the shift to a new persona is complete.
(Laderman 1995, 115-142)
Or, a musical bow (another stringed instrument) is transformed into a divination implement in the hands of the shaman, as practiced among the Khakass, Kuznetsk, and Sayan Turks (Sheykin 1980, 26).
In conclusion, the above descriptions are examples of the symbolic representation and transformation of personalities and images, as facilitated by sounds and their sources. The general function of a piece of music or sound in shamanism fluctuates between serving as an aesthetic object and as a symbolic formulation. The shaman is foremost highly creative, a quality often identified with accomplished performing artists and musicians. Music and musical instruments are integral parts of world shamanism, irrespective of local constraints on the type, quantity, and quality of music involved. Shamans and their musical tools of the trade adapt well to our contemporary times of increased urbanization, modernization, and national or local politics of culture.
Daniel K. Avorgbedor
References and further reading:
Andritzky, Walter. 1989. Schamanismus und Rituelles Heilen im alten Peru. Berlin: Verlag C. Zerling.
Avorgbedor, Daniel. 2000. “A Typology of Sonic Articulations in Healing and Exorcism Practices of the Anlo-Ewe.” World of Music 42, no. 2: 9-24.
Basilov, Vladimir N. 1992. “The Scythian Harp and the Kazakh Kobyz: In Search of Historical Connections.” Pp. 77—100 in Foundations of Empire: Archaeology and Art of the Eurasian Steppes. Edited by Gary Seaman. Los Angeles: Ethnographics Press, Center for Visual Anthroppology, University of Southern California.
Beattie, John, and John Middleton, eds. 1969. Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa. New York: Africana Publishing Corporation.
Charles, Lucile Hoerr. 1953. “Drama in Shaman Exorcism.” Journal of American Folklore 66: 95-122.
Eagle, Douglas Spotted. 1997. Voices of Native America: Native American Music. Liberty, UT: Eagle’s View Publishing.
Emsheimer, Ernst. 1988. “On the Ergology and Symbolism of a Shaman Drum of the Khakass.” Translated by Robert Caroll. Imago musicae 5: 145-166.
Friedson, Steven. 1996. Dancing Prophets: Musical Experience in Tumbuka Healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Grebe, Marfa Ester. 1978. “Relationships between Music Practice and Cultural Context: The Kultrun and its Symbolism.” World of Music 20, no. 3: 4-106.
Hajdu, P. 1978. “The Nenet Shaman Song and Its Text.” Pp. 355-372 in Shamanism in Siberia. Edited by V. Dioszegi and Mihaly Hoppal; translated from the Russian and Hungarian by S. Simon. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.
Hoppal, Mihaly. 1997. “Tracing Shamanism in Tuva: A History of Studies.” Pp. 123-136 in Shamanic Songs and Myths of Tuva. By Kenin-Lopsan, Mongush Borakhovich; edited by Mihaly Hoppal; translated by Aldynai Seden-Khurak et al. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado; Los Angeles: International Society for TransOceanic Research.
Hornbostel, Erich Moritz, and Curt Sachs. 1961 [1914]. “The Classification of Musical Instruments.” Galpin Society Journal 14: 3-29. Reprint of the English translation by Anthony Baines and Klaus P. Wachsmann. Originally published in Zeitschrift fur ethnologie. Heft 4 u. 5. 1914, under the title Systematik der Musikinstrumente.
Howard, Keith. 1990. Bands, Songs, and Shamanistic Rituals. Seoul: Seoul Computer Press; Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch.
Ijzermans, Jan. 1995. “Music and Theory of the Possession Cult Leaders in Chibale, Serenje District, Zambia.” Ethnomusicology 39, no. 20: 245-274.
Johnston, Thomas F. 1992. “The Socio-Mythic Contexts of Music in the Tlingit Shamanism and Potlatch Ceremonials.” World of Music 34, no. 2: 43-71.
Kawamura, Kunimitsu. 1994. “The Life of a Shamaness: Scenes from the Shamanism of Northeastern Japan.” In Folk Beliefs in Modern Japan. Contemporary Papers on Japanese Religion, vol. 3. Edited and translated by Norman Havens; edited By Inoue Nobutaka. Tokyo: Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics, Kokugakuin University. Online version at http://www.kokugakuin.ac.jp/ ijcc/wp/cpjr/folkbeliefs/kawamura.html
Kendall, Laurel. 1995. “Initiating Performance: The Story of Chini, a Korean Shaman.” Pp. 17-58 in The Performance of Healing. Edited by Carol Laderman and Marina Roseman. New York: Routledge.
Kenin-Lopsan, Mongush Borakhovich. 1997. Shamanic Songs and Myths of Tuva. Edited by Mihaly Hoppal; translated by Aldynai Seden-Khurak et al. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado; Los Angeles: International Society for TransOceanic Research.
Laderman, Carol. 1995. “The Poetics of Healing in Malay Shamanistic Performances.” Pp. 115-142 in The Performance of Healing. Edited by Carol Laderman and Marina Roseman. New York: Routledge.
Laderman, Carol, and Marina Roseman, eds. 1995. The Performance of Healing. New York: Routledge.
Lee, Jung Young. 1981. Korean Shamanistic Rituals. Religion and Society, vol. 12. The Hague: Mouton Publishers.
Mamiya, Michio. 1987. “Sensing Time.” Translated by Hugh De Ferranti. Contemporary Music Review 1, no. 2: 45-51.
McLeod, Norma. 1971. “The Semantic Parameter in Music: The Blanket Rite of the Lower Kutenai.” Inter-American Institute for Musical Research Yearbook 7: 83-101.
Reprinted as pp. 185-204 in Music as Culture. Vol 3. Edited by Kay Kaufman Shelemay. New York: Garland Publishing, 1990.
Norton, Barley. 2000. “Vietnamese Medium Rituals: The Musical Construction of the Spirits.” World of Music 42, no. 2: 75-97.
Oppitz, Michael. 1990. “Le tambour et son pouvoir.” Translated from the German by Isabelle Schulte-Tenckhoff. Cahiers de musiques traditionnelles 3: 79—95.
Potapov, L. P. 1978. “The Shaman Drum as a Source of Ethnographical History.” Pp. 169—180 in Shamanism in Siberia. Edited by V Dioszegi and Mihaly Hoppal; translated from the Russian and Hungarian by S. Simon. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.
Price, Neil S., ed. 2001. The Archaeology of Shamanism. London and New York: Routledge.
Roseman, Marina. 1991. Healing Sounds From The Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine. Berkeley: University of California Press.
———. 1998. “The Indigenous Peoples (Orang Asli) of the Malay Peninsula.” [Subsection titled “Animistic Religious Philosophy and Shamanistic Practice.”] Pp. 560—589 in Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Vol. 4, Southeast Asia. Edited by Terry E. Miller and Sean Williams. New York and London: Garland.
———. 2001. “Engaging the Spirits of Modernity: The Temiars.” Pp. 109-129 in Healing Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism, and Science in Asian Societies. Edited by Linda H. Connor and Geoffrey Samuel. Westport, CT, and London: Bergin and Garvey.
Rouget, Gilbert. 1985. Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations between Music and Possession. Translated from the French and revised by Brunhilde Biebuyck. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Seo, Maria Kongju. 2000. “Ritual Music of Hanyang kut by Spirit-Possessed Shamans in Korea.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, Seattle.
Sheykin, Yuri. 1980. “Siberian Peoples: Traditional Instruments.” P. 26 in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 2d ed. Vol. 2. Edited by Stanley Sadie. London: Grove’s Dictionaries of Music.
Van Deusen, Kira. 1996. “Shamanism and Music in Tuva.” Unpublished manuscript.
Veniaminof, Ivan. 1840. “Notes on the Atkin Aleuts and the Koloshi.” Pp. 1-35 in Notes on the Islands of the Unalaska District. Vol. 3. In Russian. St Petersburg.
Waley, Arthur. 1973 [1955]. The Nine Songs: A Study of Shamanism in Ancient China. San Francisco: City Lights Books.
Watson, Aaron. 2001. “The Sounds of Transformation: Acoustics, Monuments and Ritual in the British Neolothic.” Pp. 178-192 in The Archaeology of Shamanism. Edited by Neil S. Price. London and New York: Routledge.
NEO-SHAMANISM
See Core Shamanism and Neo-Shamanism
NEUROPSYCHOLOGY OF SHAMANISM
Analyzing the universal characteristics of shamanism in terms of modern neuropsychology provides an understanding of those universals as rooted in the normal functioning of the human mind and body. More importantly, it provides a basis for understanding why these characteristics have functioned effectively in the past and why they still have an important contribution to make to the healing of individuals and society.
The assumption of shamanic universals is inherent in most conceptualizations of shamanism. The central aspects of the shaman emphasized by Mircea Eliade (1989)—someone who enters ecstasy to interact with the spirit world on behalf of the community—have been extended in recognition of other universal characteristics associated with shamanism (see, e.g., Harner 1990; Winkelman 1992 for review). The concept of shamanism as a cross-cultural or universal practice implies a foundation for the systematic similarities. These similarities derive from adaptations to the psychobiology of altered states of consciousness and innate brain modules that provide the basis for a variety of shamanic practices, experiences, and representations (Winkelman 2000). This entry outlines a neurological model of shamanism, organized around the core concepts of altered states of consciousness, spirit, and community, and addressing shamanic universals: the soul
journey, death and rebirth, drumming, music, dancing, animism, animal spirits, and therapeutic processes.
The neurological basis of shamanism involves what Charles Laughlin, John McManus, and Eugene d’Aquili (1992) referred to as neurognostic structures. The term neurognostic refers to the biological structures underlying gnosis (or knowing) and experience. Shamanism uses a number of neurognostic structures, which provide the basis for the universality of shamanic practices and their adaptive advantages. Shamanism was the original neurotheology, ritual practices that activated brain structures and processes in ways that produce psychological integration and a sense of the transcendent and spiritual. Human evolution involved acquisition of a specialized innate modular brain structure with specific functions (see, e.g., Mithen 1996). These innate modules were adaptations for addressing particular kinds of tasks, and provided capabilities in language, music, mimesis (imitation), animal species classification, self-recognition, inference of other’s mental states (mind reading), and tool use. Many universals of shamanism involve the use of these innate modules (Winkelman 2000).
Universals of Shamans
A cross-cultural study (Winkelman 1990, 1992) has empirically established shamanic universals, showing similar characteristics associated with the healing practitioners of hunter-gatherer societies around the world. These universal features include characteristics emphasized by Eliade—ecstasy (an altered state of consciousness), spirit world interaction, and community service—as well as other characteristics:
an experience in an altered state of consciousness known as soul journey or soul flight
training through deliberately induced altered states of consciousness, particularly vision quests
an initiatory experience involving death and rebirth
the use of chanting, music, drumming, and dancing
the ritual involvement of the entire community
therapeutic processes focused on soul loss and recovery
the belief that disease is caused by attacks by spirits and sorcerers, and the intrusion of foreign entities
abilities of divination, diagnosis, and prophecy
charismatic leadership malevolent acts, or sorcery various relationships to animals, including control of animals, transformation into animals, and hunting magic
Many of these universal features of shamanism are directly related to (1) the physiological dynamics of altered states of consciousness; (2) the metaphoric integrations of innate representational modules; and (3) the psychophysiological effects of the ritual healing activities.
Ecstasy, or Altered States of Consciousness The ecstasy, or altered state of consciousness, recognized as a universal of shamanism is central to the selection, training, and professional practice of shamans. Shamanic altered states of consciousness are induced by a variety of procedures (e.g., drumming, clapping, singing, and chanting; fasting and water restrictions; prolonged periods of sleeplessness, or deliberate periods of sleep for dream incubation; austerities such as temperature extremes and painful exposures or mutilations of the body; and hallucinogens and other plant medicines). The shamanic altered state of consciousness is most typically engaged through drumming, chanting, and dancing to the point of collapse (or deliberate repose). However, the diversity of practices for inducing altered states of consciousness has an underlying
set of commonalities in overall physiological effects upon brain processes and functions (Mandell 1980; Winkelman 1992, 1996, 1997, 2000). The overall physiological dynamics involve an activation of the autonomic nervous system until exhaustion from sympathetic exertion leads to collapse and a parasympathetic dominant phase; this phase in which the parasympathetic nervous system is dominant may also be entered directly through withdrawal, relaxation, and internal focus of attention. This activation until collapse induces the body’s relaxation response, a part of the cycle of homeostatic balance in the nervous system that provides natural recuperation and healing.
The Integrative Mode of Consciousness
The shamanic altered state of consciousness is one of several states of consciousness that occur in the integrative mode of consciousness (Winkelman 2000). The presence in all cultures of procedures for altering consciousness reflects its role in the normal functions of the brain. The integrative mode of consciousness reflects a normal brain’s response, manifested in synchronized brain wave patterns in the theta and alpha range (3—6 and 6—8 cycles per second). These brain wave patterns are produced by serotonin-mediated limbic system activity that establishes linkages with lower brain structures. This activity produces strong, coherent, and synchronized theta wave patterns that send ascending discharges or impulses up the neuraxis of the brain (a central nerve bundle integrating information from the nervous system). These synchronous discharges are driven up into the frontal cortex, where they replace the normal fast and desynchronized brain wave activity with coherent slow wave discharges (Mandell 1980; Winkelman 1992, 2000). The overall effect of the integrative mode of consciousness is to integrate information from the whole organism, particularly stimulating or moving emotions and memory, creating ascending brain waves that propagate into the frontal cortex. In other words, this integrates nonverbal information from the emotional and behavioral brain structures into the personal and cultural systems mediated by language and the frontal cortex.
Soul Journey: Self in Presentational Symbolism
The principal form of an altered state of consciousness experienced by the shaman is characterized as a “soul journey” or “soul flight”; although possession is often attributed to practitioners called shamans, possession is not normally associated with shamans of huntergatherer societies. Shamanic soul flight is a universally distributed phenomenon, reflective of bases in neurognostic structures. The basic structure of soul flights is reported cross-cultur-ally in astral projection, out-of-body-experiences, and near-death experiences. This experience of shamanic flight reflects activities associated with innate psychophysiological structures and psychosocial capacities of the human nervous system. Harry Hunt (1995) proposed that the experience of soul flight involves the capacity for self-representation from the point of view of the “other.” The soul flight is “of” one’s self, but one can see one’s self from a detached third-person perspective. One sees one’s self traveling and doing things, allowing one to reflect upon their significance from another perspective. These perceptions of self found in soul journey involve representations in the visual spatial modality that Hunt referred to as a presentational symbolism; it is the same symbolic system that presents the experiences of dreams. Charles Laughlin (1997) characterized shamanism as a body-based cosmology. These symbolic systems predate language, providing mediums for externalizing self-representations, visual presentations of one’s self and significant phenomena. These “presentations” are information that create new forms of selfawareness that permit transcendence of ordinary awareness and identity.
Shamanic development focuses on “mental imagery cultivation” (Noll 1985), utilizing internal visions that result from release of suppression of the visual cortex. These internal images involve brain structures for processing of perceptual information. Imagery involves psychobiological communication processes that mediate metaphoric relations between different domains of experience and levels of information processing; images evoke complex physiological and psychological reactions. Images integrate unconscious and psychophysiological
information with affective or cognitive levels, where a “vision” of a threatening object emerges into consciousness, propelled by subconscious processes that have integrated information revealing the threatening situation (Winkelman 2000). Images constitute a preverbal symbol system that activates muscles to achieve goals, often acting outside of consciousness, as when a plastic snake makes us jump away without thinking. Shamanic visions provide adaptive advantages in analysis, analogic synthesis, diagnosis, and planning, integrating diverse information sources into a concise plan of action—the “vision.”
Shamanic Induction of
Altered States of Consciousness: Chanting, Drumming, and Dance
The induction of shamanic altered states of consciousness is primarily based upon the use of chanting, drumming, and dancing. The use of these practices reflects their ability to induce theta and alpha wave patterns (Winkelman 1997, 2000); they are also based in innate brain modules associated with the call and expressive systems of other animals and a uniquely human mimetic controller. Musical skills are a uniquely human capability having deep evolutionary roots in capacities that humans share with other primates (see Wallin, Merker, and Brown 2000). Calls, hoots, and group enactments are an expressive system that communicates emotional states, attracts attention, and motivates responses. These expressions play a role in managing social contact, interpersonal spacing, mate attraction, pair bonding, and enhancing group cohesion. This expressive system based in rhythm and affective dynamics evolved for communication of internal states and enhancing group dynamics (Wallin, Merker, and Brown 2000). Music’s adaptive roles include promotion of group cohesion and coordination, enhancing synchrony and cooperation among group members. Music strengthens group dynamics through cognitive and emotional expression and coordinating the behavior of different individuals into synchronized performances.
Mimesis. Music, chanting, singing, poetry, dancing, and play share origins in mimetic modules that provide rhythm, affective, seman
tics, and melody. The effects of music include a compulsion to move with the rhythm, including shaking, clapping, stomping and dancing, which reflect operations of this innate mimetic controller. This mimetic capacity, manifested in music and dance, evolved to enhance social bonding and communication of internal states; this capacity also provided mechanisms for inducing altered states of consciousness and breaking down existing habits and thought patterns. These provide processes for establishing group behavioral and mental coordination through body-based systems of “rhythmo-affec-tive semantics,” the use of the body and imitation to mime in ways that express fundamental emotions and a mythic worldview. Mimesis involves the unique human ability to entrain the body to external rhythms, including imitation, clapping, stomping, and dancing. The first of human mimetic activities involved ritual dances and imitation of animals, using body movement and gestures and facial expressions as symbolic mechanisms through mimesis. The shamanic practices of drumming, dancing, and ritual imitation are based in operations of this innate mimetic controller. Group ritual dances provide mechanisms for maintaining coordination among a group. These mimetic expressive capacities still provide mechanisms for learning social roles and manual skills, expressing interpersonal dynamics, and communicating preverbal levels of experience.
Innate Modules and Shamanic Thought Central aspects of shamanism involve the cross-modal integration of the innate processing modules for recognition of animal species (natural-history intelligence), self-conceptualization, and mental attributions regarding social others (mind reading). This shamanic role in managing the integration of different modules is exemplified in shaman’s skills in these areas: in natural history, being the master of the game animals; in self-conceptualization, exemplified in shifts in identity developed through animal familiars and guardian spirits; and in social intelligence, being the leader of the group and mediator of intergroup relations. The innate modules for recognition of self and other and animal classification provided the basis for shamanic universals of animism, animal spirits, guardian spirits, and totemism. Animism, or
belief in the spirit world, involves the projection of innate representation modules for understanding self and social others onto the unknown and natural phenomena. Animal allies, guardian spirits, and totemism involve the use of the natural-history intelligence, employing capacities for representing animal species and their characteristics to form personal and social identities.
Animism as a Natural and Social Epistemology
Shamanism is based in animism, the belief in spirit entities. Animism involves attributing human mental, personal, and social qualities to the unknown and natural phenomena. Anthropomorphism is one example of animism, since it involves attributing characteristics of the human mind to spirits and nonhuman entities (Guthrie 1993). Shamanism emphasizes the attribution of human qualities to animals. This projection of cognitive similarity, the use of the self as a model of the unknown other, is a normal manifestation of symbolic capabilities in relationship to the environment (Hunt 1995). Environmental and personhood theory suggests animism is a relational epistemology that is universal because perception requires that humans be related to (situated in) their world and environment. Spirits involve “super persons” capable of entering into relationships, processes basic to the shamanic process of forming personal and group identity. The belief in spirits reflects a natural social and relational epistemology derived from the social intelligence ability to infer the mental states of others. This ability enables prediction of others’ behavior through an intuitive psychology, a “theory of mind,” involving attribution of mental states to others. This “mind reading” involves the organism’s use of its own mental states, feelings, and behaviors in similar contexts to gain insight into the mental states and likely behavior of others.
Animals in Shamanic Thought: Totemism and the Guardian Spirit Complex
Shamanism engages forms of self-development by integrating representations from the natural history module, specialized capacities for organizing knowledge about animals and species,
within the representations of the self and social domains. Animals are central in shamanic practices and beliefs. Animals are the basic allies and spirit helpers of shamans, who are generally considered to be “masters of the animals” or to have special relationships to the deities and natural forces that control animals. Shamans are typically called upon to assist in hunting, and are generally believed to be able to transform themselves into animals. These universals of shamanism involving animals reflect the use of the innate module that Steven Mithen (1996) referred to as the natural history or intuitive biology module. This module involves specialized innate capacities for organizing knowledge about animals and recognizing “species essence,” manifested in the human universal of taxonomical classification schemata for the natural world. This ability to produce natural taxonomical classification schemata provides a universal analogical system for creation and extension of meaning. The use of animals in social and cognitive modeling is one of the most fundamental aspects of metaphoric and analogical thought (Friedrich 1991), a universal human system for expression of meaning and creation of social and personal identity.
Totemism. The use of animal species for social representations and self-representations is manifested in the phenomena of spirit allies and totemism. Claude Levi-Strauss (1962) characterized totemism as involving the establishment of metaphoric relationships between the domains of animals and social groups, conceptualizing humans through models provided by the animal world. Totemic thought works analogically, applying the analogy of differences among species to understand differences among human groups. The differences among animal species are used to represent the differences among human groups. In totemism, human groups are distinguished by attributing to them the characteristics derived from the animal world, and the identity of social groups is conceptualized in terms of the models provided by animal species.
The Guardian Spirit Complex. Shamanism also uses the natural history module to incorporate animal spirits as a part of personal identity and powers, as manifested in the practices of the guardian spirit complex. Guardian spirits have psychosocial functions, guiding the indi
vidual in personal and social choices (Swanson 1973). The animals with whom shamans have personal relationship have psychosocial functions: The animals empower the shamans and provide them with a representational system for self-development and self-differentiation. This was illustrated in the widespread North American guardian spirit complex focused on development during the transition to adulthood (Swanson 1973). Animals as aspects of self-representation involve “sacred others,” the intersection of the spiritual and social worlds in cultural processes that provide aspects of personal identity (Pandian 1997). The intersection of the animal spirit with personal identity involves cultural processes for producing symbolic models for the self. The animal spirits provide projective systems for psychosocial relations and ideals that structure individual psychodynamics and social behavior. Spirit representations produce a symbolic self and provide for resolution of social contradictions in the development of the self. Spirit beliefs are projective systems, exemplifying norms for self and psychosocial relations, and structuring individual psychodynamics and social behavior. The “shamanistic sacred self” (Pandian 1997) provides protection from stress and anxiety through management of emotions and attachments.
Animal powers and guardians are natural modules that provide alternate forms of selfrepresentation that facilitate social adaptations. The alternate senses of self that animal allies provide are mechanisms for problem solving and mediation of personal and social conflict. Spirit concepts of self serve as variable command-control agents for mediating conflict between the different selves and instinctive agents, enabling the operation of the social organism with respect to a hierarchy of goals, and orienting problem-solving modules to nonroutine tasks and problems (Winkelman 2000). Spirit concepts as self-representations help mediate a hierarchy of personal and social goals. Shamanism developed these associative processes, constructing and manipulating a variety of selves for psychological and social integration. Animism, totemism, and guardian spirits, like soul flight and death-and-rebirth experiences, are natural symbolic systems for self-representation within which the self is internally differentiated and manipulated in relationships to others.
Shamanic Therapeutics
Shamanic practices use a number of therapeutic procedures based in physiological processes and their manipulation through psychological and social dynamics. Central aspects of shamanic therapies involve the physiological dynamics of altered states of consciousness, the psychobiosocial effects of community bonding, and the psychophysiological consequences of symbolic healing and ritual.
The Bases of Shamanistic Therapy in Altered States of Consciousness
Altered states of consciousness have therapeutic effects through a number of processes. Procedures that induce parasympathetic dominant states and limbic-frontal integration and synchronization provide a number of healing mechanisms (Winkelman 1992, 1996, 1997, 2000): reduction in stress, anxiety, and psychosomatic reactions; regulation of psychophysiological processes underlying emotions, social attachments and bonding; providing access to sub- and unconscious information; and integration of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive processes. Parasympathetic dominant states can produce therapeutic effects through lowering autonomic arousal. Rapid induction of parasympathetic dominance causes erasure of conditioned responses and increases suggestibility and placebo effects. The neuroendocrine mechanisms of meditation indicate that stress reduction also occurs through enhancement of serotonin functioning (Walton and Levitzky 1994). Increase of serotonin reduces cortisol levels, and consequently the anger and fear reactions. Activation of preconscious brain processes facilitates their integration into consciousness and the resolution of repressed conflicts that affect emotions and physiological responses. Stimulation of limbic system functions and associated processes involved in the feelings and in the formation of individual and social identity contribute to healing through producing an integration of emotional information into consciousness, an enhanced integration of cognitive and emotional processes. The systemic integration across the different functional systems of the brain enhances learning, attention, memory, and adaptation to novel situations (Mandell 1980).
Community Relations as a Psychobiological Therapy
The role of community emphasized by Eliade in characterizing shamanism reflects its psychosocial influences (community cohesion, positive expectation, and social support) and psychobiological effects (attachment and opioid mechanisms). Communal activities meet and reinforce attachment needs of the mammalian biosocial system and elicit psychosocio-physiological mechanisms that release endogenous opiates (Frecska and Kulcsar 1989). Shamanic practices elicit the mammalian attachment and affectional bonding system, providing for feelings of security and eliciting opioid responses. Shamanic rituals elicit psychobiologically mediated attachment processes that are based in the body’s opioid mechanisms (Frecska and Kulcsar). Shamanic rituals crosscondition cultural symbols with patterns of attachment and their physiological and emotional responses. Emotionally charged symbols provide a basis for elicitation of the opioid system and ritual manipulation of physiological responses.
A variety of shamanic activities also evoke production and release of endogenous opioids (see, e.g., Prince 1982; Winkelman 1997). Shamanic activities that stimulate the opioid system include exhausting rhythmic physical activities (e.g., dancing and clapping); temperature extremes (e.g., cold or sweat lodges); austerities (e.g., water and food deprivation, and self-inflicted wounds); emotional manipulations (e.g., fear and positive expectations); and nighttime activities (when endogenous opioids are naturally highest). The release of natural opioids stimulates the immune system and produces a sense of euphoria, certainty, and belonging. Endogenous opioids enhance coping skills, maintenance of bodily homeostasis, pain reduction, stress tolerance, environmental adaptation, and group psychobiological synchronization.
Spirit Relations and Role Taking: Incorporating the “Other”
Humans have an innate capacity to take the perspective of others. Humans understand other’s mental states by using their own minds to infer the cognitions and motivations of
others. This capability enables humans to incorporate others into self-identity, to use the models of others to augment and model the self. Shamanism uses this capability in soul flight and to provide therapeutic processes through role taking (Peters and Price-Williams 1981; Winkelman 2000). The processes of role taking are exemplified in the shaman’s spirit world interaction, during which shamans enact the personalities of the spirits. The interactions with the spirit world provide representations of personal and social psychodynamics, including emotions, attachments, social influences, and behaviors. Spirit beliefs also reflect social structures of the group and the dynamics of social and interpersonal relations. Spirit concepts are symbolic systems representing the intrapsychic dynamics of the self and psychosocial relations with others. Consequently, spirits integrate cultural and natural symbolic systems, manipulating unconscious aspects of personal and communal identity, and affecting psychosocial relations with others. Spirits involve symbolic systems that represent complexes, that is, organized perceptual, behavioral, and personality dynamics that operate independent of, or dissociated from, ordinary awareness and social identity. The psychosocial content of spirit representations allow shamanic rituals to affect the psychodynamics of the patient.
Shamanistic healing practices address dissociated personality complexes by eliciting the holistic imperative, a drive toward integration across levels of consciousness (Laughlin, McManus, and d’Aquili 1992). These complexes, representing unintegrated aspects of self, are manipulated in shamanic rituals to produce healing by restructuring and integrating the unconscious dynamics. Shamanic healing integrates the self, utilizing visual and corporeal processes to unite unconscious information with the conscious mind. Shamanic manipulation of spirit constructs provides therapeutic change because the spirits represent fundamental aspects of the self. The shaman’s dramatic enactment of interactions with spirits provides models for self-development and resocialization. The innate capability to incorporate the other enables the spirit systems to contribute to identity modification through the internalization of spirit behaviors and animal allies and powers.
Death and Rebirth. Shamanic constructions of identity are also illustrated in a universal feature of shamanic development, the death-and-rebirth experience. Shamanic development includes a crisis involving attacks by spirits that lead to the experience of death and dismemberment, followed by a reconstruction of the victim’s body with the addition of spirit allies and powers. The universality of the death-and-re-birth experience reflects neurognostic processes of self-transformation, a natural response to overwhelming stress and intrapsychic conflicts (Walsh 1990). This breakdown of ego structures is experienced in visual symbols, images of bodily destruction, which activate innate drives toward psychological integration (Laughlin et al. 1992). Shamanic healing restructures ego and identity, using ritual to activate holistic imperatives to produce a new self identity at higher levels of psychological integration.
Biosocialization and Symbolic Healing Processes
A preeminent function of shamanic healing is the use of symbols to manipulate physiological processes. Symbolic capacities emerged during phylogenetic evolution as a part of the neural processing of experience and are fundamental to development of neural organization (Laughlin, McManus, and d’Aquili 1992). Human cognitive modeling of the environment occurs through processes of socialization that canalize physiological responses to symbols, training specific patterns of response in the operation of organic systems. Symbolic and affective associations enable neural symbols to evoke physiological processes and brain structures. This link of symbols to perceptions, cognition, and affect is grounded in common foundations of neuropsychological and symbolic processes. The association among social, symbolic, and physiological systems enables “symbolic penetration,” symbolic effects on physiological processes and latent psychological structures. Shamanic healing evokes latent structures, archetypal and preverbal processes of the pre-egoic levels of the limbic brain, and integrates them into conscious processes to produce healing (whole-ing, making whole).
Shamanism developed as a human institution to manipulate the relationships between symbols and brain processes to produce healing
through psychophysiological integration at preverbal mythic levels through metaphoric processes. These ritual processes help overcome cultural conditioning and psychosomatic dynamics. Shamanism heals through processes of psychophysiological integration, projection of advanced developmental models for transference, and engaging neurocognitive structures to produce therapeutic changes (Laughlin et al. 1992). These enhanced interactions between conscious and unconscious processes establish links of preverbal mythic levels with cultural and egoic structures, creating psychosocial and psychophsyiological integration. Shamanistic healers’ symbolic manipulations provide a form of assurance that can counteract the physiological effects of stress and anxiety. Ritual symbolic manipulations can intervene in stress mechanisms through changing emotional dynamics, and consequently altering the balance in the autonomic nervous system and endocrine responses. Symbolic manipulations also elicit emotions, linking body and mind through effects on the limbic system.
Contemporary Manifestations of Shamanic Neurognostic Structures
The neurological foundations of shamanic features persist in contemporary society, reflected in contemporary spontaneous religious experiences (Stark 1997) and diagnostic categories of spiritual emergencies (Walsh 1990). These include a variety of relations between self and spirit others (Stark 1997; Winkelman 2000), as well as spontaneous shamanic journeys, the death-and-rebirth experience, mystical experiences with psychotic features, and expressions of psychic abilities (Walsh 1990). The shamanic paradigm is a more useful framework than the pathological attributions of psychiatry for addressing spiritual emergencies as natural manifestations of human consciousness and as developmental opportunities (Krippner and Welch 1992). The neurognostic framework explains why these shamanic phenomena are spontaneously manifested and why a spiritual healing approach is more successful in addressing these conditions. The shamanic paradigm provides a framework for reinterpreting what psychiatry considers acute psychosis and emotional disturbance. The psychobiological basis of the shamanic paradigm allows for these
shamanic experiences to be interpreted as natural brain processes and as opportunities for personal development, providing a context for developing control over these experiences. The shamanic approach treats death and rebirth, soul loss, out-of-body experiences, power loss, animal familiars, and spirits as natural manifestations of consciousness, and provides the opportunity to engage in the classic shamanic approach of self-empowerment to address these experiences.
The shamanic paradigm and its neurognostic frameworks make it possible to treat the modern resurgence of this ancient human healing tradition as a normal part of healing processes rather than as a return to superstition or a psychopathology. The neurognostic framework provides an understanding of these phenomena as natural phenomena of consciousness. Their continued manifestations make the shamanic traditions of altering consciousness, ritually manipulating identity, and changing psychosocial dynamics through adopting animal and spirit world identities still relevant. Consequently shamanic healing practices may not only be good complementary therapies, but may also provide important alternatives to biomedicine by addressing the biopsychosocial and spiritual dynamics of health and illness. Shamanic healing can open new avenues for all healers by ritually addressing the innate brain processing modules for knowledge about mind, self, others, and nature and manipulating these natural models of self for personal healing and development.
Michael Winkelman
See also: Art and Shamanism; Divination;
Entoptic Images; Healing and Shamanism; Rock Art and Shamanism; Soul Retrieval;
Visions and Imagery: Western Perspectives
References and further reading:
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask.
London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Frecska, Ede. and Zsuzsanna Kulcsar. 1989. “Social Bonding in the Modulation of the Physiology of Ritual Trance.” Ethos 17, no. 1: 70-87.
Friedrich, Paul. 1991. “Polytrophy.” Pp. 17-55 in Beyond Metaphor: The Theory of Tropes in
Anthropology. Edited by J. W. Fernandez. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Guthrie, Stewart. 1993. Faces in the Clouds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harner, Michael. 1990. The Way of the Shaman. San Francisco: Harper and Row.
Harner, Michael, and Sandra Harner. 2001. “Core Practices in the Shamanic Treatment of Illness.” Shamanism 13, nos. 1 and 2: 19—30.
Hunt, Harry. 1995. On the Nature of Consciousness. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Krippner, Stanley, and Peter Welch. 1992. Spiritual Dimensions of Healing: From Native Shamanism to Contemporary Health Care. New York: Irvington.
Laughlin, Charles. 1997. “Body, Brain, and Behavior: The Neuroanthropology of the Body Image.” Anthropology of Consciousness 8, nos. 2 and 3: 49—68.
Laughlin, Charles, John McManus, and Eugene d’Aquili. 1992. Brain, Symbol and Experience: Toward a Neurophenomenology of Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1962. Totemism. Translated from the French by Rodney Needham. Boston: Beacon.
Mandell, Arnold. 1980. “Toward a Psychobiology of Transcendence: God in the Brain.” Pp. 379—464 in The Psychobiology of Consciousness. Edited by D. Davidson and R. Davidson. New York: Plenum.
Mithen, Steven. 1996. The Prehistory of the Mind: A Search for the Origins of Art, Religion and Science. London: Thames and Hudson.
Noll, Richard. 1985. “Mental Imagery Cultivation as a Cultural Phenomenon: The Role of Visions in Shamanism.” Current Anthropology 26: 443—451.
Pandian, Jacob. 1997. “The Sacred Integration of the Cultural Self: An Anthropological Approach to the Study of Religion.” Pp. 505—516 in The Anthropology of Religion. Edited by S. Glazier. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Peters, Larry, and Douglas Price-Williams. 1981. “Towards an Experiential Analysis of
Shamanism.” American Ethnologist 7: 398-418.
Prince, Raymond. 1982. “The Endorphins: A Review for Psychological Anthropologists.” Ethos 10, no. 4: 299-302.
Stark, Rodney. 1997. “A Taxonomy of Religious Experience.” Pp. 209-221 in The Psychology of Religion: Theoretical Approaches. Edited by B. Spilka and D. McIntosh. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Swanson, Guy. 1973. “The Search for a Guardian Spirit: The Process of Empowerment in Simpler Societies.” Ethnology 12: 359-378.
Wallin, Nils, Bjorn Merker, and Steven Brown, eds. 2000. The Origins of Music. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Walsh, Roger. 1990. The Spirit of Shamanism. Los Angeles: Tarcher.
Walton, Kenneth, and Debra Levitsky. 1994. “A Neuroendocrine Mechanism for the Reduction of Drug Use and Addictions by Transcendental Meditation.” Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly 11, nos. 1 and 2: 89-117.
Winkelman, Michael. 1990. “Shaman and Other ’Magico-Religious Healers’: A Cross-Cultural Study of their Origins, Nature and Social Transformation.” Ethos 18, no. 3: 308-352.
———. 1992. “Shamans, Priests and Witches: A Cross-Cultural Study of Magico-Religious Practitioners.” Anthropological Research Papers no. 44. Tempe: Arizona State University.
———. 1996. “Psychointegrator Plants: Their Roles in Human Culture and Health.” Pp. 9-53 in Yearbook of Cross-Cultural Medicine and Psychotherapy, vol. 6. Edited by M. Winkelman and W. Andritzky. Berlin: Verlag und Vertrieb.
———. 1997. “Altered States of Consciousness and Religious Behavior.” Pp. 393-428 in Anthropology of Religion: A Handbook of Method and Theory. Edited by S. Glazier. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Winkelman, Michael. 2000. Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey.
O
OFFERINGS AND
SACRIFICE IN SHAMANISM
As conduits to supernatural beings, shamans are often courts of first and last appeal for community members who seek to recover good health, ensure a plentiful harvest, appease harmful spirits, and more. Shamanic techniques vary cross-culturally in their details. However, preparing offerings to spirits is an element of shamanic performance routinely considered central to its efficacy. The substance of these offerings varies among societies. Some shamans use seeds and abalone shells (Handel-mann 1967). Others use beads and tobacco (Dixon 1908). There are those who offer ceremonial silk clothing to the spirits, thus creating an interface between natural and supernatural realms “charged with significance” (Humphrey 1996, 282). In certain instances the shaman’s craft may also require animal sacrifice. Spirit mediums among the Philippines’ Buid, for example, sacrifice pigs or chickens as food for malicious spirits that are said to cause illness by “biting” their human victims. Conversely, provisioning good spirits with sacrificial pigs is a way to invite them to share a closer relationship with humans (Gibson 1986). As Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss noted at the end of the nineteenth century, the category of sacrifice includes “any oblation, even of vegetable matter, whenever the offering or part of it is destroyed” (Hubert and Mauss 1964, 12). In that sense, many shamanic offerings may be considered sacrifices, regardless of whether blood is drawn.
Offerings in Ngaju Shamanism, Indonesia
The question of what constitutes an appropriate offering or sacrifice is often a paramount concern of shamans and their audiences. Regarding the seances of the Oya Melanau
shamans of Malaysia, H. S. Morris noted that their spirit familiars enjoy good food and sweet scents. “[A shaman] must provide a suitable reception.... [For this reason] shamanistic cur
ing ceremonies are regarded as a series of entertainments,” akin to hosting friends (Morris 1993, 112). Among the Ngaju Dayaks of Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, shamans known as tukang sangiang are likewise often called upon to conduct healing ceremonies. One part of a Ngaju shaman’s work involves mixing antidotes and salves from roots, tree bark, and flowers. Another calls for the shaman to “smoke” patients, building smoldering fires of carefully chosen woods that chase disease away.
Ngaju shamans are solicited for their ability to enter trance and become possessed by spirits known as sangiang. They flatter, cajole, or bribe spirits into identifying the cause of illness and suggesting courses of treatment. Rarely are the sangiang themselves blamed for sickness, but the extent to which a sangiang is able to effect a cure may hinge upon whether the supernatural being is satisfied with the offerings given to it (Schiller 1997). Thus bargaining with spirits is an important aspect of the work of some shamans. At first glance the ability of shamans to negotiate with the supernatural world may seem surprising. In many cultures, however, the shaman is thought of as the equal of the supernatural beings with whom the shaman comes into contact, or even as enjoying mastery over those beings. Thus shamans, as has been noted regarding the Kalahari Bushmen, rather than “plead,” “throw themselves into combat with the gods” (Marshall 1962).
Indu Onot, the Transvestite Shaman
An example of how offerings may be used by shamans is provided by the aforementioned Ngaju Dayaks, as observed by the author. In
preparation for a session, Ngaju shamans set out offerings for the spirits to attract them to the ceremony site. Throughout their performance they add offerings, usually in response to spirits’ specific requests. An example of this shamanic technique is provided by Indu Onot, whose clientele includes villagers from throughout the middle and upper Katingan River region. Indu Onot received her calling as a child, when a female spirit approached in her dreams. The spirit explained that in return for shamanic abilities, the youngster would have to honor her throughout the years by bringing offerings of food, clothes, and perfumes to a special shrine. The spirit also added a singular re-quest—that the child would dress in a manner that indicated their close relationship. Two decades later, Indu Onot continues to uphold her end of the bargain, making offerings of food to her spirit patron whenever she takes a meal and setting out offerings of rice, tobacco, coconut oil, and perfume whenever she invokes her. She also observes the spirit’s special request, and, although she is anatomically male, Indu Onot dresses as a woman. She wears a colorful wrapper tightly wound around her body, and modestly covers her shoulders with a lacy blouse secured by a brooch. Her gold bracelets, purchased with money she has collected from her patients, sparkle on her wrists. Her three children address her as “mother,” just as they do Indu Onot’s wife, who is their biological mother.
When asked to perform a divination or healing, Indu Onot sends her assistant ahead to ready the site, including arranging offerings for the yet unknown spirits who will possess her body during her shamanic trance. Raw rice, tobacco, coconut oil, betel nut, and lime are set out in a brass bowl in front of a chair on which the shaman will be seated. A small pot of smoldering resin is lit—this, too, is considered an offering. Sometimes a chicken is killed; its blood is used to “feed” the animate essence of the shaman’s ritual paraphernalia, and its cooked flesh is set out on a plate where spirits may feast. After making an obeisance to her tutelary spirit, Indu Onot begins to rock to and fro, clutching in her hands strips of cloth or palm fronds suspended from the ceiling. She mumbles an invitation to the spirits to descend into her body. She places the brass bowl on her head and begins to dance, her hands darting
and weaving above her like birds searching for a resting place amid the jungle canopy. Suddenly she stamps her foot and speaks in a voice that is not her own. One after another, spirits pass through her, each requesting something. Normally they ask for specific foods, which the audience members rush to procure and place in front of Indu Onot. Not all requests are for things to eat, however. During one performance, a spirit asked for the loan of a pair of soccer shoes. A teenage observer removed the pair he had on, and Indu Onot wore them until the next sangiang arrived. Sometime spirits request cigarettes, which Indu Onot immediately smokes. Such offerings of tobacco, or the use of tobacco in shamanic performance, are common throughout the world.
Wana Shamans
The interactions that take place among Indu Onot, the spirits who have possessed her, and the onlookers who have assembled for the session are not unique. Similarly “spirited” exchanges between shamans and audiences who are anxious to respond to the demands of supernatural beings for offerings appear elsewhere in anthropological literature. Jane Atkinson, for example, refers to the “dramatic conundrum” faced by Wana shamans in Sulawesi, Indonesia. On the one hand, members of Wana society depend upon shamans and their supernatural allies for continued well-being. On the other, shamans are “dependent upon audience members to acknowledge their shamanic claims” (Atkinson 1987, 346). By enlisting audience members in efforts to respond to the requests that spirits are making through particular shamans, the shaman gives the audience a chance to demonstrate its “great feelings” for the shaman’s condition (349) and to endorse the shaman’s claim to possessing special powers. Thus, although the patient’s illness is the catalyst for the performance, it is the shaman’s immediate needs rather than the patient’s that the audience must address. In this way, the shaman’s standing in the community is acknowledged and strengthened.
Animal Sacrifice
Neither Ngaju nor Wana shamans emphasize animal sacrifice in their healing performances.
However, among some peoples who attribute illness to soul loss, blood sacrifices performed by shamans are said to substitute for human souls. An example comes from the Rungus of Sabah, Malaysia. Rungus shamans turn to their spirit familiars for assistance in determining what type of rogon or rusod, spirit of the natural or social world, is causing a patient’s illness and what sacrifice that spirit requires in exchange for a soul’s return. When a rogon demands a sacrifice that is beyond a patient’s family’s means, the shaman may try to negotiate on the family’s behalf: “Some rogon receive large pigs, others small ones and some rogon want red chickens and others white. At this time [the shaman] is able to ask for mercy and bargain for a smaller sacrifice” (Appell and Appell 1993, 28). In some cases, as in that of a major or lingering illness, only a large sacrifice will do. In those cases, a bargain is struck with a rusod to hold a ceremony at a future point “when the family has been able to raise a pig of sufficient size.... At the time of making this bargain, a
piglet is designated to be raised for this ceremony” (29).
Whether shamans offer pigs, plants, palm wine, or even a young man’s soccer shoes to the spirits that assist them, useful information about social, political, and economic conditions in contexts where shamanism is practiced may be gleaned by considering the nature of the offerings presented. Writing about Korean shamanism, Kwang-Ok Kim has argued that “shamanism provides the people with a profound symbolic language” (1994, 218). Although analyses of this symbolism have traditionally focused on elements of costume, dance, or percussive accompaniment, the type, number, and arrangement of shamanic offerings also offer insight into local knowledge systems, including how they have been affected by social change. Among the Karo of Sumatra, Indonesia, for example, shamanic healers have organized financial savings clubs to offset the expenses of holding ceremonies and entertaining spirits. Such voluntary associations have become necessary as relatives and neighbors who have converted to Christianity or Islam now refuse to provide economic support for ceremonies that they consider “heathen” (Steedly 1993, 6). Thus, offerings and sacrifices should clearly not be considered dimensions of shamanic performance of a low order of impor
tance. For social scientists, a shaman’s offerings may hold clues to a deeper understanding of the complex relations between spirit beliefs and other dimensions of social and cultural orders. For shamans, offerings and sacrifices may be seen as crucial to the efficacy or failure of their efforts, with lives and livelihoods hanging in the balance.
Anne Schiller
See also: Gender and Shamanism; Indonesian Shamanism; Transvestism in Shamanism
References and further reading:
Appell, George, and Laura Appell. 1993.
“To Converse with the Gods: Rungus Spirit Mediums.” Pp. 3—53 in The Seen and the Unseen: Shamanism, Mediumship, and Possession in Borneo. Edited by Robert Winzeler. Williamsburg, VA: Borneo Research Council.
Atkinson, Jane. 1987. “The Effectiveness of Shamans in an Indonesian Ritual.” American Anthropologist 89: 342—355.
Dixon, Roland. 1908. “Some Aspects of the American Shaman.” Journal of American Folklore 21: 1—12.
Firth, Raymond. 1964. “Shaman.” Pp. 638—639 in A Dictionary of the Social Sciences. Edited by Julius Gould and William Kolb. New York: Free Press.
Gibson, Thomas. 1986. Sacrifice and Sharing in the Philippine Highlands. London School of Economics Monographs in Social Anthropology, no. 57. London: Athlone.
Handelman, Don. 1967. “The Development of a Washo Shaman.” Ethnology 6: 444— 464.
Hubert, Henri, and Marcel Mauss. 1964. Reprint. Sacrifice: Its Nature and Functions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Original edition, 1898.
Humphrey, Caroline. 1996. Shamans and Elders: Experience, Knowledge, and Power among the Daur Mongols. With Urgune Onon. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Kim, Kwang-Ok. 1994. “Rituals of Resistance: The Manipulation of Shamanism in Contemporary Korea.” Pp. 195—219 in Asian Visions of Authority: Religion and the Modern States of East and Southeast Asia. Edited by Charles Keyes, Laurel Kendall, and Helen Hardacre. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
200 offerings and sacrifice in shamanism
Marshall, Lorna. 1962. “!Kung Bushman Religious Beliefs.” Africa 39: 347—381.
Morris, H. S. 1993. “Shamanism among the Oya Melanau.” Pp. 101—129 in The Seen and the Unseen: Shamanism, Mediumship, and Possession in Borneo. Edited by Robert Winzeler. Williamsburg, VA: Borneo Research Council.
Schiller, Anne. 1997. Small Sacrifices: Religious Change and Cultural Identity among the Ngaju
of Indonesia. New York: Oxford University Press.
Steedly, Mary. 1993. Hanging without a Rope: Narrative Experience in Colonial and Postcolonial Karoland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
PERFORMANCE
See Dramatic Performance in Shamanism
PILGRIMAGE AND SHAMANISM
Pilgrimage normally involves travel to and from a sacred place, and parallels shamanism in its emphasis on the role of the journey in religious experience. Pilgrims, like shamans, move toward an otherworldly realm in order to engage with spiritual forces, and often have a specific aim in mind, such as healing of the self or others. Many shamans seek a temporary release from ordinary consciousness through trance, while many pilgrims aspire to achieve temporary release from the concerns of their daily lives through physical travel. In both cases, the trip away from ordinary reality may be fraught with austerities and dangers, resulting in death or harm to the practitioner, but if successful it has the potential to bring prestige and renown.
Some writers argue that the tripartite structure of a rite of passage is central to both pilgrimage and shamanism. The person leaves the mundane world (in body or in soul), spends some time in a “liminal” (in-between) zone where normal rules of human behavior are suspended or reversed, and then returns to society, possibly with a changed identity. Shamans themselves may be ambiguous figures in their communities, feared as much as revered for their powers, just as pilgrims are sometimes mistrusted by the local inhabitants of places through which they travel as strangers.
At times, pilgrimage is clearly an integral part of shamanism. In her account of forms of sacred journeying carried out by the Huichol Indians of Mexico, Barbara Myerhoff (1974) argued that the male shaman-priest, or
mara’akame, gains some of his extraordinary powers and authority specifically through pilgrimage. Ramon, her chief informant, claimed to make magical flights to the land of the gods and to be able to follow the souls of the dead to the Underworld, while using these skills on behalf of patients in curing ceremonies. His initial training period involved the leading of five, physically very demanding, trips to the sacred land of Wirikuta in an annual hunt for the peyote cactus, used to promote visionary experiences.
Similarly, Carmen Blacker (1975, 100) wrote of how Japanese shamans, whose practices combined Buddhist influences with other, possibly older religious forms, acquired powers to heal and to banish malevolent spirits through a number of ascetic practices, such as fasting, seclusion, standing under waterfalls, and scaling mountains. She quoted the example of a tenth-century female ascetic who complained that no sooner did the word go round that someone had climbed a mountain, than he or she was besieged by people wanting a cure. Such traveling to holy mountains may not merely parallel, but may even replace, shamanic flights of the soul through the cosmos, particularly among contemporary practitioners.
In the Japanese case, religiously inspired movement complemented the stillness involved in self-imposed seclusion; in common with other examples of pilgrimage and shamanism, this example reveals how traversing space may involve not only a testing of the person, but also a search for the otherness of the spirit realm (Vitebsky 2001, 15). Geographically and cosmologically defined landscapes are central to both pilgrimage and shamanism. Donald Joralemon and Douglas Sharon (1993) followed the shamanic career of Rodrigo Lopez, a Peruvian curandero (healer). As part of Lopez’s train
ing, he made various pilgrimages to sacred highland lagoons in the company of expert practitioners, but once initiated he felt no need to return to such power spots, since he regarded himself as able to tap the power of the lagoons in spirit. Artifacts collected by curanderos on their trips can also be used to evoke the power of sacred landscapes and can become permanent features of a curer’s practice, paralleling the pilgrimage practice of bringing home souvenirs as a means of recalling but also appropriating the powers of a place.
Shamanism is often seen as involving exchange between humans and spirits or animals. Kaj Arhem (1998, 104) noted that, among the Makuna Indians of the Colombian Amazon, shamans travel in the mind to spirit owners and guardians of animals, asking them to deliver the hunter’s prey and the fisherman’s catch, and offering coca and tobacco in return. The dealings between Makuna shamans and the spirit owners are likened to marriage negotiations, and a successful hunt is compared to a completed marriage—an exchange of women between groups. Pilgrimage can also illustrate the connections between travel and exchange, with material or spiritual offerings to the gods cementing requests for help or providing thanks for a boon provided. The pilgrim, like the shaman, may make a journey on behalf of another person, seeking for divine aid. In both cases, transactions are mediated through an economy of human-divine relations, and in some instances the transacting pilgrim is also a shaman. Among the Mixe of the Oaxacan highlands of southern Mexico, shamans travel to mountain tops or sacred caves and sacrifice fowls in order to alter the fate of a child born on a negative calendar day (Lipp 1991, 88-90).
Scholars have debated the political significance of shamanism and pilgrimage, and in particular their respective connections with centralized forms of authority. The fact that both shamans and pilgrims journey to, and sometimes beyond, the known world and the social order sometimes makes them appear peripheral in relation to mainstream hierarchies. They may even be seen as a threat to such hierarchies if they appear to be able to cultivate alternative sources of power and authority. Shamans in Siberia and Mongolia were mistrusted and killed by Communist governments,
just as mass movements of pilgrims in medieval Europe were sometimes feared as potential embodiments of the uncontrolled crowd. However, it would be misleading to see either shamanism or pilgrimage as inherently resistant to centers of political power or always in conflict with the state. Using the example of twelfth and thirteenth century Mongols, Caroline Humphrey noted that such inspirational practices were profoundly implicated in the formation of Inner Asian States. She added that, in China and among the people of the hinterland, the sky was seen as the all-encompassing principle of cosmic order and human destiny, with the ruler on earth governing his people by virtue of the destiny accorded by heaven. In such a context, the assertion of a shamanic ability to ascend to the sky could be seen as a politically highly significant claim (Humphrey 1994, 193-197). Similarly, numerous pilgrimage sites have acquired political importance: Walsingham in England became a favorite venue for medieval English royalty to display their piety, while the Golden Temple in Amritsar has famously become not only a place of pilgrimage but also a key focal point for the assertion of Sikh identity.
Nevertheless, the apparently close parallels that have been revealed between shamanism and pilgrimage should also be treated with caution. As a result of the approach adopted by Mircea Eliade (1989), there has been a tendency to regard shamanism as ideally capable of existing in a “pure,” transhistorical form, involving mastery of spirits and magical flight as part of generic and archaic “techniques of ecstasy.” Similarly, pilgrimage is sometimes perceived too crudely as a firmly identifiable and homogeneous phenomenon, the manifestation of an allegedly universal human need to engage in a quest for the sacred. In reality, the religious complexes termed shamanism and pilgrimage contain very many varieties of ritualized action and religious meaning, which can only fully be understood by examining the cultural context in which any given activity takes place. Alice Kehoe pointed out that Siberians themselves distinguish between several types of practitioners and adepts, who are too loosely labeled shamanic by outsiders (Kehoe 2000, 4). Within the same religion, or even within the same traveling group, pilgrims can also have very different motivations, behaviors, and roles.
There are some obvious differences between conventional depictions of shamanism and of pilgrimage, despite the fact that the two can coexist in the same society and sometimes help to constitute each other. Shamans tend to venture out alone (or perhaps with familiars) in their soul flights, although drumming and dancing may accompany the passage of the practitioner’s soul as it seeks the company of spirits. Pilgrims much more frequently engage in actual physical travel, and often undertake their journeys in groups to enjoy the good company of others or—as often in the past— for safety’s sake while encountering unknown lands. The shaman’s role often requires specific skills as part of a specialized calling, possibly including the regularized cultivation of trance states (in Central and South America, drugs that can promote altered states of consciousness play a key role in shamanic traditions). Pilgrims are less likely to be religious virtuosi or leaders within their communities, and while they sometimes experience religious ecstasy, they do not usually expect to achieve changes in states of consciousness unless they are mystics. The cultural locations of the two religious complexes also exhibit some differences. Many examples of shamanism come from within the hunting societies of Europe and Asia (for instance, Scandinavia, Siberia, and Greenland), while pilgrimage has become most fully developed within the world religions, which have encouraged believers temporarily to leave their local communities in order to seek out distant but concretely attainable goals (Mecca within Islam, the Holy Land for Christians, and so on).
In recent decades, shamanism and pilgrimage have experienced an upsurge of interest in scholarly circles, and in both cases there has been a growth in studies highlighting the cultural and historical particularities of specific historical and cultural contexts. Both institutions have also been influenced by a rising interest in popular spirituality in the West, which has frequently involved the appropriation and transformation of non-Western cultural forms. So-called Neo-Shamanism avoids the austerities of shamanic initiation described above, and— displaying its connections with New Age spiri-tualities—tends to be oriented toward individual quests for self-realization rather than community welfare. The selling of “shamanic
journeys” (Kehoe 2000, 81) through weekend workshops has become common, and new techniques draw disparate ethnographic traditions together in syntheses that are designed for ease of assimilation by clients. Galina Lindquist noted that attention to the imagery of the mind (whether manifested in journeys, dreams, or daydreams) seems to be the principal feature that distinguishes a member of the neo-shamanic movement from a “mainstream” person (Lindquist 1997, 89—90). The non-West-ern “other” is depicted in these terms as a source of power and self-renewal, but the ambiguity and danger frequently associated with the shamanic role is played down in favor of a more benign view of nature, the environment, and the spiritual world.
Similarly, contemporary pilgrimage often (though by no means always) avoids the dangers and privations of the past, not least because travel is nowadays much easier than before, and in the West is also influenced by current tendencies to mix and match cultural forms. For instance, some contemporary travelers on the camino, the network of pilgrimage routes that reach across Europe and lead to Santiago de Compostela, are ostensibly following an ancient tradition, but in fact exhibit individualized attempts to achieve spiritual renewal that are characteristic of New Age thought. Thus both pilgrimage and shamanism provide metaphors of journeying and self-discovery that can readily be adapted to certain aspects of contemporary Western sensibility, whether participants see themselves as being overtly “religious” or not.
Observing such developments in the West should not lead us to assume that supposedly pristine, ancient, and static forms of pilgrimage or shamanism will necessarily die out and be replaced by their New Age counterparts. Such a view would ignore the fact that all religious traditions have constantly changed and adapted throughout history. More generally, we can be confident of the continued salience of both pilgrimage and shamanism—sometimes closely combined, sometimes more clearly separated— in the near future.
Simon M. Coleman
See also: Core Shamanism and Neo-Shamanism; Huichol Shamanism; Neo-Shamanism in Germany; Peruvian Shamans
References and further reading:
Arhem, Kaj. 1998. Makuna: Portrait of an
Amazonian People. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Blacker, Carmen. 1975. The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Davidson, Linda Kay, and David Gitlitz. 2002.
Pilgrimage: From the Ganges to Graceland, an Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Humphrey, Caroline. 1994. “Shamanic Practices and the State in Northern Asia: Views from the Center and Periphery.” Pp. 191—228 in Shamanism, History, and the State. Edited by Nicholas Thomas and Caroline Humphrey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Joralemon, Donald, and Sharon Douglas. 1993. Sorcery and Shamanism: Curanderos and Clients in Northern Peru. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Kehoe, Alice B. 2000. Shamans and Religion: An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
Lindquist, Galina. 1997. Shamanic Performances on the Urban Scene: Neo-Shamanism in Contemporary Sweden. Stockholm: Stockholm University.
Lipp, Frank J. 1991. The Mixe of Oaxaca: Religion, Ritual, and Healing. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Myerhoff, Barbara G. 1974. Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Vitebsky, Piers. 2001. The Shaman: Voyages of the Soul. Trance, Ecstasy and Healing from Siberia to the Amazon. London: Duncan Baird. First American edition, Boston: Little, Brown, 1995.
PSYCHOLOGY OF SHAMANISM
The psychology of shamanism has been ignored for many decades because psychologists
did not value the shamanic tradition, and because earlier models of science could not do justice to its complexity. Developments in psychological phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience, and qualitative research, however, provide both the perspective and the tools to bring rigor and imagination to an investigation of shamanic experience that will give understanding of its contents and its structure (Krippner 2002). For example, Roger Walsh has provided an analysis of shamanic phenomenology, concluding that it is “clearly distinct from schizophrenic, Buddhist, and yogic states,” especially on such important dimensions as awareness of the environment, concentration, control, sense of identity, arousal, affect, and mental imagery (Walsh 2001, 34).
From a psychological perspective, shamans can be described as community-sanctioned spiritual practitioners who claim to deliberately modify their attention in an attempt to access information not ordinarily available to members of their social group. (The use of the term attention instead of the more usual state of consciousness is discussed later in the article.) Shamans use this information in their attempts to ameliorate the physiological, psychological, and spiritual problems faced by the group members who gave them shamanic status. Shamans appear to have been humankind’s first psychotherapists, first physicians, first magicians, first performing artists, first storytellers, and first weather forecasters (Eliade 1989). They were originally active in hunting and gathering tribes and fishing tribes and still exist there in their most unadulterated form; however, shamanic and shamanistic practitioners also exist in nomadic pastoral societies, and in horticultural, agricultural, and even urban societies today.
Shamanic Roles
Michael Winkelman’s (1992) seminal cross-cultural study of forty-seven societies focused upon magical-religious practitioners, that is, those individuals who occupy a socially recognized role that has as its basis an interaction with the nonordinary, nonconsensual dimensions of existence. This interaction involves special knowledge of purported spirit entities and how to relate to them, as well as special powers that allow these practitioners to influ
ence the course of nature or human affairs in ways not ordinarily possible. Winkelman coded each type of practitioner separately on such characteristics as the type of magical or religious activities performed, the techniques employed, the procedures used to alter consciousness, the practitioner’s mythological worldview, and the practitioner’s psychological characteristics, perceived power, socioeconomic status, and political role. Statistical analysis provided a division into four groups: (1) members of the shaman complex (shamans, shaman-healers, and healers); (2) priests and priestesses; (3) diviners, seers, and mediums; (4) malevolent practitioners (witches and sorcerers).
It turned out that the shaman was most often present in hunting and gathering societies and fishing societies. However, the introduction of horticulture and agriculture coincided with the rise of priests and priestesses, and of organized religions. Shamans lost much of their power to priests, but retained their healing abilities. Shamanic oral traditions differ from the body of sacred scripture as maintained by an organized priesthood, remaining flexible and adaptive, each situation being unique.
Political differentiation of the society led to a further division of labor into that of healers, mediums, and malevolent practitioners. Any given society may have one or more magical-religious practitioner. Among the !Kung of southwest Africa, for example, the majority of males are magical-religious practitioners, as well as a sizable minority of females (Katz 1981).
Using Winkelman’s terminology, the shaman-healer specializes in healing practices, while the healer typically works without the dramatic alterations of consciousness that characterize the shaman and, to a lesser extent, the shaman-healer. Diviners (as well as seers and mediums) act on a client’s request to heal or to make prophecies after they have “incorporated” spirits. These practitioners typically report that they are conduits for the spirits’ power, and claim not to exercise personal volition once they “incorporate” (or are “possessed by”) the spirits. Shamans, on the other hand, frequently interact with the spirits and sometimes “incorporate” them, but remain in control of the process, only suspending volition temporarily.
For example, volition is surrendered during some Native American ritual dances when there is an intense “flooding.” Nevertheless, the
shamans purportedly know how to enter and exit this type of intense experience (Winkelman 2000). Malevolent practitioners are thought to have control over some of the “lower” spirits as well as access to power through rituals. Typically, they do not see their mission as empowering a community as a whole (as do the shamans). Rather, sorcerers are employed by individual members of their community to bring harm to enemies (inside or outside the community) or to seek favor from spirit entities for specific individuals through sorcery, witchcraft, hexes, and spells.
The more complex a society, the more likely it is to have representatives of each type of practitioner, except for the prototypical shaman. It should be kept in mind, of course, that categories are never absolute; some practitioners are difficult to classify and others switch roles according to the occasion (Heinze 1991). Many writers reserve the word “shamanic” to refer to practitioners and practices that clearly fall within the domain of the shaman or the shaman-healer. The same writers use the word “shamanistic” to refer to practitioners and practices that are related to the shamanic realm, but which are basically adaptations of it because one (or more) of the critical criteria, such as community sanction and voluntary control of shifts in attention, is absent.
Shamanic Selection and Training
Shamans enter their profession in a number of ways, depending on the traditions of their community. Some shamans inherit the role. Others may display distinctive bodily signs (e.g., an extra digit, albinism, an unusual birthmark), behaviors (e.g., bodily fits and seizures, behavior patterns culturally associated with the opposite gender), or experiences (e.g., vivid dream recall, professed out-of-body activity). Depending on the potential shaman’s culture, any of these might constitute a call to shamanize. In addition, future shamans might survive a near fatal disease and interpret this phenomenon as a call. Spirit entities might call them in dreams or in daytime reveries (Heinze 1991, 146-156). These calls may come at any age, depending on a society’s tradition; in some cases, the call arrives late in life, giving meritorious individuals opportunities to continue their service to the community in ways that utilize their life experi
ences. On the other hand, the strange and erratic behaviors of some tribal members may be interpreted by the community as a call, thereby canalizing potentially disruptive actions into behavior patterns that are perceived to be beneficial (Katz 1981).
In some societies, there is no formal training program, while in others the training process may last for several years. The mentors may be older shamans or even spirit entities (e.g., one’s ancestors, power animals, nature spirits) who are said to give instructions in the neophyte’s dreams. The skills to be learned vary from society to society, but usually include diagnosis and treatment of illness, contacting spirit entities from nonordinary dimensions, supervising sacred rituals, interpreting dreams, predicting the weather, herbal knowledge, prophecy, and mastering the self-regulation of bodily functions and attentional states.
So-called spirit entities need to be contacted for different purposes. If they are dissatisfied they have to be propitiated; if a person dies without leaving a will, the deceased person’s spirit needs to be contacted to determine property disposition; if a deceased person’s spirit is causing trouble, the spirit needs to be appeased. Magical performance of one sort or another is learned, whether it be sleight of hand, taking advantage of synchronous events, or the purported utilization of what Westerners would call parapsychological phenomena (e.g., extrasensory perception, psychokinesis). In most shamanic societies, a variety of chants, dances, songs, epic poems, stories, and symbols must be learned and used when appropriate. Some tribes arrange a special feast when the initiate passes a phase of training.
In many instances, a society has recognized several types of shamans. Among the Gold Eskimos, only the siurku shaman knows how to heal, the nyemanti shaman performs special rituals over a deceased person’s soul, and the kasati shaman conveys the soul of the deceased to the spirit world (Kalweit 1988, 139). Among the Cuna Indians of Panama, the abisua shaman heals by singing, the inaduledi specializes in herbal cures, and the nele focuses on diagnosis (Krippner 1993).
It would be erroneous to assume that shamans represent a single constellation of traits, or that there is a “shamanic personality.” It may be that some shamans have been “psy
chotic” but nonetheless have been honored by the community as long as they served social needs. More often, shamans undoubtedly have been men and women of great talent, mastering a complex vocabulary and a treasury of knowledge concerning herbs, rituals, healing procedures, and the purported spirit world.
Shamanic Personality Traits
Some social scientists have observed the links between shamanism and changed states of consciousness, concluding that these states are symptomatic of “schizophrenia.” Julian Silverman postulated that shamanism is a form of acute schizophrenia because the two conditions have in common “grossly non-reality-oriented ideation, abnormal perceptual experiences, profound emotional upheavals, and bizarre mannerisms” (Silverman 1967, 22). According to Silverman, the only difference between shamanic states and contemporary schizophrenia in Western industrialized societies is “the degree of cultural acceptance of the individual’s psychological resolution of a life crisis” (23). Silverman claimed that the social supports available to the shaman are “often completely unavailable to the schizophrenic in our culture” (29). George Devereux (1961), among others, conceptualized shamans as neurotics, epileptics, or hysterics.
L. B. Boyer, B. Klopfer, F. B. Brawer, and H. Kawai (1964) attempted to gather data regarding this controversy by administering Rorschach inkblots to seventy-one Apache men, twelve shamans, fifty-two non-shamans, and seven “pseudoshamans” who claimed to possess special powers but who had not been accorded shamanic status by members of their community. Rorschach analysis demonstrated that the shamans showed as high a degree of reality testing potential as did members of the non-shamanic group. Pseudoshamans were more variable on this dimension and demonstrated “impoverished personalities”’ (179). The shamanic group was as able to approach ambiguous stimuli as were the non-shamans, but showed a higher degree of ability to “regress in the service of the ego,” a keener awareness of peculiarities, more theoretical interests, and more “hysterical” tendencies. These tendencies were in evidence when the team examined the high frequency of anatomical and sexual responses to the Rorschach inkblots, as well as the frequent use of
color. Even so, the authors stated, “In their mental approach, the shamans appear less hysterical than the other groups” (176). The study concluded that the shamans were “healthier than their societal co-members.... This finding ar
gues against [the] stand that the shaman is severely neurotic or psychotic, at least insofar as the Apaches are concerned” (179).
Richard Noll (1985) compared verbal reports regarding the phenomenology of their unusual experiences from both schizophrenics and shamans to criteria in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. He reported that important phenomenological differences exist between the two groups and that taking what he called the “schizophrenic metaphor” seriously, by asserting that shamans are schizophrenic, is untenable (455). Indeed, some social scientists (e.g., Peters and Price-Williams 1980) claim that such altered states as spirit possession and out-of-body experience can be therapeutic in nature.
Sheryl Wilson and Theodore Barber (1981) have identified fantasy-prone personalities among their hypnotic subjects. This group is highly imaginative but, for the most part, neither neurotic nor psychotic. It is likely that many shamans would fall within this category, as the shaman’s visions and fantasies are thought to represent activities in the spirit world. Also, the shaman typically exhibits considerable charisma as what Jungians refer to as a psychopomp, a culturally validated figure who mediates between realities. Among the psychopomp’s duties are transporting souls of the dead to the spirit world, as well as traveling to the spirit world to receive instructions or to petition favor from the deities.
Cross-gender behavior has been reported to characterize shamans in many societies. Walter Williams (1986) reviewed the way in which Native American cultures dealt with sexual diversity, finding that most tribes believed that someone who is unusual could be easily accommodated without being regarded as abnormal. Many tribes directed what Westerners would refer to as effeminate males and masculine females into shamanic roles, recognizing their sensitivity, androgyny, and capacity for empathy.
Many Siberian tribes often select “soft men” as shamans, and Siberian shamans in general frequently cross-dress during their rituals in or
der to partake of the opposite gender’s power. These practices are also common in Polynesia and Korea, where androgynous males who serve as shamans are highly regarded for their healing abilities, as well as for their purported knowledge of future events.
Altered States
Some Russian anthropologists claim that the first shamans were nature healers, but during a later feudal phase of social evolution, they invented spirits, necessitating the cultivation of altered states of consciousness to contact them and communicate with them (Hoppal 1984). Morris Berman suggested that “heightened awareness” may be a more accurate description than “altered states,” because shamans describe their intense experience of the natural world in such terms as “things often seem to blaze” (Berman 2000, 30). Most other scholars, however, have favored the idea that altered states of consciousness are basic to shamanism, especially spirit “incorporation” and out-of-body experience or “journeying.” Erika Bourguignon surveyed 488 societies (57 percent of those represented in an ethnographic atlas) and discovered that 437, or 89 percent, were reported to have one or more institutionalized, culturally patterned altered states of consciousness (Bour-guignon 1974, 11). She concluded that the capacity to experience altered states of consciousness was a basic psychobiological capacity of human beings, a conclusion supported by Winkelman’s (2000) review of pertinent psychoneurological data. Steven Mithen’s (1996) vivid portrayal of the mind’s “prehistory” describes the emergence of what he calls the cognitive fluidity that caused the cultural explosion of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic Ages, and it is likely that shamans and their altered states of consciousness were manifestations of this fluidity.
Larry Peters and Douglass Price-Williams (1980) compared forty-two societies from four different cultural areas to determine commonalties among shamanic altered states of consciousness. They identified three common elements: voluntary control of entrance into and duration of the altered state of consciousness; memory of the experience after the altered state of consciousness; and ability to communicate with others during the altered state of con
sciousness. Ruth-Inge Heinze has pointed out that the basic difference between shamans and mediums appears to be that “shamans are capable of going on a magical flight and remain the actors during their performances. On the other hand, mediums become possessed by spirits who use human bodies through which they are able to act” (Heinze 1991, 15). In addition, shamans characteristically travel into the spirit world more often than other practitioners do. They may journey from “middle earth” to the “Upper World” to visit ancestral spirits and to the “Lower World” to visit power animals, and journey to the past, the future, and remote areas of the globe (Krippner 2000). The spirits encountered in each of these realms will differ from society to society, but shamanic journeying is typically linked to the ability to enter altered states of consciousness.
Incorporation is a term often used to denote the voluntary nature of spirit embodiment; it may or may not be accompanied by amnesia after the experience, depending on the practitioner, the practitioner’s training, and the practitioner’s cultural tradition. In possession, however, the individual generally embodies the spirit in an involuntary or unpredictable manner; there is usually amnesia after the experience. In obsession, the spirit works from the outside, purportedly influencing the individual’s behavior, characteristically in a maladaptive way. Exorcism is often necessary to treat involuntary possession and obsession if a malevolent spirit is involved. Sometimes the troublesome spirit is not wicked but simply “ignorant” or “underdeveloped.” The exorcist, who might be a shaman, priest, priestess, or medium, often attempts to “send” the offending spirit “into the light,” because the spirit needs to progress in its evolution and spiritual development.
The notion of spirit possession poses problems for psychologists because it is an implicit explanation as well as a description. Vincente Crapanzano defined it as “any altered state of consciousness indigenously interpreted in terms of the influence of an alien spirit” (Crapanzano 1977, 7). Others have defined possession more behaviorally, noting that the possessed person appears to be invaded by a different personality who manifests through changes in that person’s physiognomy, personality, voice, and motor function. A differentiation can also be made
between forms of voluntary possession, or incorporation (as experienced by, e.g., shamans and mediums) and involuntary possession (as experienced by, e.g., victims of hexes or malevolent spirits).
Bourguignon (1974) distinguished between trance (i.e., an altered state of consciousness not linked to cultural concepts of possession but in which spirit messages can be delivered and spirits contacted) possession trance (i.e., an altered state of consciousness in which there is radical dissociation without subsequent recall accompanied by spirit-manifested speech and other spirit-directed behavior), and possession (i.e., behaviors associated with spirit invasion that do not directly involve altered states of consciousness, such as spirit-induced illness).
Peters and Price-Williams reported that shamans in eighteen out of the forty-two societies they surveyed engaged in spirit “incorporation,” ten in out-of-body experiences, eleven in both, and three in some different kind of altered state of consciousness (Peters and PriceWilliams 1980, 397—415). Peters and PriceWilliams have also compared the experience of these altered states of consciousness to a rite of passage in which an episode of panic or fear yields to insight; a new integration of various elements of one’s personality results from this process.
Winkelman’s cross-cultural survey of fortyseven societies yielded data demonstrating that at least one practitioner in each populace demonstrated the induction of an altered state of consciousness associated with role training. The specific induction procedures included mind-altering substances (e.g., alcohol, opiates, psychedelics, stimulants, tobacco), auditory stimulation (through drumming and the like), exposure to extreme temperatures, sexual abstinence, social isolation, sleep induction, sleep deprivation, food restrictions, induced convulsions, excessive motor behavior, and extreme relaxation. Winkelman’s analysis indicated some distinct patterns regarding incorporation and magical flight. However, Winkelman found cases of profound altered states of consciousness that involved neither incorporation nor magical flight. He presented a unifying psychophysiological model of these altered states of consciousness: “a parasympathetic dominant state characterized by the dominance of the frontal cortex by slow wave discharges
emanating from the limbic system” (Winkelman 1992, 198), interacting with various social variables.
Michael Harner (1980) and others have cited additional ways in which shamans alter consciousness, for example, jumping (e.g., the 16-24-hour ut ceremonies of Korean shamans), mental imagery (e.g., the visualization practices of the Tamang shamans of Nepal who “see” their tutelary spirits prior to incorporating them), and chanting (e.g., the repetition of monotonous incantations by Taiwanese shamans). Often, shamans use two or more procedures simultaneously to alter consciousness. Korean shamans combine jumping with drumming, and the Arapaho Indians smoke a ceremonial pipe and rub their bodies with sage in addition to using drums. Andrew Neher (1961) has demonstrated that drumming can produce brain activation by coinciding with the theta EEG frequency (about 4 to 8 cycles per second) through auditory driving. Others have built on and extended Neher’s work, finding that theta brain waves were synchronized with monotonous drumbeats of 3—6 cycles per second, a rhythm associated with many shamanic ritual themes. Others have found trends toward enhanced positive mood states and an increase in positive immune response as measured by a concentration of salivary immunoglobulin A (S-IgA) during shamanic drumming, and another team has reported that rhythmic drumming had a salubrious effect upon group members’ immune systems, as measured by increased natural killer cell activity (see Kripp-ner 2002 for references).
Shamans also use naturally occurring altered states of consciousness, dreams being the primary example. Some shamanic traditions deny that they alter consciousness; Navaho shamans exhibit prodigious feats of memory in recounting cultural myths, and use sand paintings, drums, and dances, but they downplay the effect these procedures have in bringing about a shift in their states of consciousness. Several similar examples may make it more appropriate to speak of shamanic “shifts of attention” rather than shamanic “states of consciousness” as a universal hallmark of the practice. Paradoxically, shamans are characterized both by an acute perception of their environment and by imaginative fantasy. These traits include the ability to construct categories, the potential for
pretending and role-playing, and the capacity to experience the natural world vividly. During times of social stress, these traits may have given prehistoric shamans an edge over peers who had simply embraced life as it presented itself, without the filters of myth or ritual (Berman 2000, 81).
Putative “parapsychological phenomena” are frequently said to accompany shamanic practices, and a few investigators have used psychological methods to study these claims. For example, Patric Giesler conducted several studies with members of what he termed “Afro-Brazilian shamanic cults.” Both “shamans” and “initiates” attempted remote viewing to locate hidden objects as well as a task involving distant influence on ritual objects. He concluded that “cultists did not demonstrate [anomalous effects] on the laboratory tasks” (Giesler 1986, 123). Indeed, members of control groups obtained the only significant results. Nevertheless, this is a provocative area of shamanic lore that deserves additional investigation.
Shamanic Healing
The shaman’s healing function is a primary focus of his or her repertoire and skills. Body and mind once were seen as a unity, and so there was no sharp division between physical and mental illness. Pain and other symptoms were viewed as sources of information that could be used in diagnosis, as were the client’s dreams, “aura,” or “energy field,” and unusual life events.
Shamans seem to know how to mobilize the expectancy of their clients. This is one of the components of effective healing described by E. Fuller Torrey (1986), the others being a shared worldview, the appropriate personal qualities in the practitioner, and procedures that empower the client. Jerome Frank and Julia Frank (1991) added that all effective healing practitioners resemble shamans in that they bolster their clients’ sense of mastery and self-efficacy by providing them with a “myth” or conceptual scheme that explains symptoms and supplies a “ritual” or procedure for overcoming them.
Procedures used by shamanic healers vary, but they may include diet, exercise, herbs, relaxation, mental imagery, surgery, prayers, purifications, and various rituals. Specific treatment procedures depend upon the diagnosis
and the cultural traditions. If a community member appears to be suffering from soul loss, a shaman needs to search for that client’s soul, restoring it before the client succumbs to a terminal condition. Diagnosis will determine whether the soul has been stolen, has been spooked away from the body, or has simply strayed during some other activity. Treatment will aim to recover the soul through “soul catching” or similar procedures.
Each shamanic society has its own diagnostic classification of diseases and their causes. Some causal agents that result in sickness are the breach of a taboo, karma for past actions (including those from a past life), the intrusion of a foreign object into the body (usually by sorcery), and a jealous neighbor casting the evil eye. In recent years, many shamans have added the germ theory of disease to their etiological schema and may refer some clients to allopathic physicians if such physicians exist in the neighborhood. Shamanism is basically an open-ended system; it can be modified, altered, revised, or changed due to the demands of historical circumstances and community requirements.
Symbolic manipulation plays a major role in shamanic healing. The drum may serve as the vehicle with which the shaman rides into the spirit world during altered states of consciousness. The blowing of smoke toward the four directions may represent an appeal to the guardians of the universe’s four quarters. For shamans and their communities, any product of human imagination represents a form of reality. As a result, mental imagery and imagination play an important role in shamanic healing (Noll 1985).
Shamanic healing usually involves the client’s family and community. Richard Katz (1981) proposed that rituals of transformation are the essential link in introducing a synergistic healing community. He noted that by providing experiences of transpersonal bonding, these rituals enable individuals to realize their communal responsibilities and sense their deep interconnectedness. Even when a client must be isolated as part of the healing process, this drastic procedure serves to impress the community with the gravity of the ailment.
There are shamanic methods of healing that closely parallel contemporary behavior therapy, hypnosis, family therapy, milieu therapy,
psychodrama, and dream interpretation. Torrey (1986) concluded that shamans and psychotherapists demonstrate more similarities than differences in regard to their healing practices.
The State of the Field
The psychology of shamanism is a growing field, as evidenced by the acceptance of symposia on the topic at several annual conventions of the American Psychological Association, the creation of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness (a division of the American Anthropological Association), and the publication of the popular magazine Shaman’s Drum. Articles on shamanism sometimes appear in such scholarly journals as the American Ethnologist, Current Anthropology, Anthropology of Consciousness, and Ethos. Since 1984, the Independent Scholars of Asia have sponsored annual international conferences on the study of shamanism. There is an International Society for Shamanistic Research, a group that has sponsored several international conferences.
The impact of shamanism is reflected in the call for preserving the Earth’s ecology, as well as in the practice of evoking positive imagery in the treatment of personal and social distress and attending to people’s spiritual emergencies and crises. Many people see the quest for healing the planet as basically a shamanic journey, requiring of all human beings a development of their shamanic capacity for sensing the connection of all living beings.
Stanley Krippner
See also: Afro-Brazilian Shamanism; Art and Shamanism; Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Shamans; Ecology and Shamanism; Gender in Shamanism; Healing and Shamanism; History of the Study of Shamanism; Hypnosis and Shamanism; Korean Shamanism; Neuropsychology of Shamanism; Psychopathology and Shamanism; Siberian Shamanism; Soul Retrieval; Trance, Shamanic; Transvestism in Shamanism;
Visions and Imagery: Western Perspectives
References and further reading:
Berman, Morris. 2000. Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Bourguignon, Erika. 1974. Culture and the Varieties of Consciousness. Boston: Addison-Wesley.
Boyer, L. B., B. Klopfer, F. B. Brawer, and H.
Kawai. 1964. “Comparisons of the Shamans and Pseudoshamans of the Apaches of the Mescalero Indian Reservation: A Rorschach Study.” Journal of Projective Techniques 28: 173—180.
Crapanzano, Vincente. 1977. “Introduction.” Pp.
1—41 in Case Studies in Spirit Possession. Edited by V. Crapanzano and V. Garrison. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Devereux, George. 1961. “Shamans as Neurotics.” American Anthropologist 63: 1088—1090.
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Frank, Jerome D., and Julia B. Frank. 1991.
Persuasion and Healing. 3d ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Giesler, Patric V. 1986. “GESP Testing of Shamanic Cultists.” Journal of Parapsychology 50: 123—153.
Harner, Michael J. 1980. The Way of the Shaman: A Guide to Power and Healing. San Francisco: Harper and Row.
Heinze, Ruth-Inge. 1991. Shamans of the 20th Century. New York: Irvington Publishers.
Hoppal, Mihaly, ed. 1984. Shamanism in Eurasia. Gottingen, Germany: Edition Herodot.
Kalweit, Holger. [1984] 1988. Dreamtime and Inner Space: The World of the Shaman. Boston: Shambhala.
Katz, Richard. 1981. “Education as Transformation: Becoming a Healer Among the !Kung and Fijians.” Harvard Educational Review 51: 57—78.
Krippner, Stanley. 1993. “Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Hypnotic-Like Procedures Used by Native Healing Practitioners.” Pp. 691—717 in Handbook of Clinical Hypnosis. Edited by J. W. Rhue, S. J. Lynn, and Kirsch. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
———. 2000. “The Epistemology and Technologies of Shamanic States of Consciousness.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 7: 93-118.
———. 2002. “Conflicting Perspectives on Shamans and Shamanism: Point and Counterpoints.” American Psychologist 57: 962-977.
Mithen, Steven. 1996. The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science. London: Thames and Hudson.
Neher, Andrew. 1961. “Auditory Driving Observed with Scalp Electrodes in Normal Subjects.” Electroencephalography and Neuropsychology 13: 449-451.
Noll, Richard. 1985. “Mental Imagery Cultivation as a Cultural Phenomenon: The Role of Visions in Shamanism (with Commentaries).” Current Anthropology 26, no. 4: 443-461.
Peters, Larry G., and Douglass Price-Williams. 1980. “Towards an Experiential Analysis of Shamanism.” American Ethnologist 7: 397-415.
Silverman, Julian. 1967. “Shamans and Acute Schizophrenia.” American Anthropologist 69: 21-31.
Torrey, E. Fuller. 1986. Witch Doctors and Psychiatrists. San Francisco: Harper and Row.
Walsh, Roger. 2001. “Shamanic Experiences: A Developmental Analysis.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 41, no. 3: 31-52.
Williams, Walter L. 1986. The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture. Boston: Beacon Press.
Wilson, Sheryl C., and Theodore X. Barber. 1981. “Vivid Fantasy and Hallucinatory Abilities in the Life Histories of Excellent Hypnotic Subjects ( ’Somnambules’): Preliminary Report with Female Subjects.” Pp. 133-149 in Imagery: Concepts, Results, and Applications. Edited by Eric Klinger. New York: Plenum.
Winkelman, Michael. 1992. Shamans, Priests and Witches: A Cross-Cultural Study of Magico-Religious Practitioners. Tempe, AZ: University of Arizona.
———. 2000. Shamanism: A Natural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing. London: Bergin and Garvey.
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
AND SHAMANISM
Since the inception of academic interest in shamanism during the second half of the nineteenth century, there has been a long-standing anthropological and psychological debate over the status of a shaman’s psychological well-being. Essentially, this debate pits those individuals who argue that the behavior and psychologi
cal states associated with shamanic practices are the result of diagnosable mental pathologies against those scholars who assert, to the contrary, that shamans are psychologically well-adjusted individuals who have honed culturally valued, therapeutic skills. Indeed, the positions in this debate range from the view that shamans are nothing other than culturally sanctioned schizophrenics or neurotics who display dissociation, sexual or behavioral deviance (or both), and often paranoid thoughts of persecution, to the view that shamans are some of the most intelligent, well-adjusted, creative, and insightful members of their communities.
This pervasive interest in psychopathology in the context of shamanic studies is grounded in what are easily two of the most dominant perspectives found in multidisciplinary work on shamanism: investigations into the psychological state of the shaman and the therapeutic efficacy of shamanic healing (Atkinson 1992). In the first of these perspectives, the shaman is viewed as suffering from numerous forms of psychopathology and mental illness, in the second, as a healer. In recent years, however, discussions of shamanism have largely shifted away from exploring shamanic practices primarily in terms of psychopathology and abnormal psychology, and have instead focused attention on what a growing number of scholars hold to be universal psychobiological structures underlying shamanic practices cross-culturally (Atkinson 1992, 310).
Early Assessments
The link between shamanism and psychopathology has its roots in early anthropological publications that attempted to draw links between shamanic practices and what was deemed at the time to be a psychotically based behavior known as “Arctic hysteria” (pi-boktoq) (e.g., Bogoras 1907). By the midpoint of the century, with psychoanalytic theory broadly influencing social scientific theorizing and research, much of the discourse on the shaman’s mental state shifted to interpretations characterized by the work of such anthropologists as Ralph Linton (1956), who believed that shamans were less psychotic than neurotic. That is, shamans were seen as individuals suffering from psychological conditions not unlike those evidenced by individu
als diagnosed with clinical hysteria. This view of the shaman as neurotic, however, was also challenged during this same period by authorities like Erwin Heinz Ackerknecht (1943), who argued that it is more often than not cultural practices rather than clinical syndromes that dictate the experience and behavior of shamans cross-culturally.
One of the most polemical positions on shamanism and psychopathology to arise during this time was found in the work of George Devereux (1956, 1961; see also Spiro 2001). Throughout his career, Devereux decidedly rejected the notion that the cultural values and norms that shaped shamanic behavior and allowed shamans to function well and serve their communities made it impossible to see their practices and states of consciousness as evidence of psychopathology. According to Devereux, shamans suffer from a definite psychological illness—comparable to schizophre-nia—that, while perhaps able to enter remission through wider social acceptance, is never completely cured. At best, Devereux argued that shamans should be understood as neurotics who are able to partially mask their symptoms by utilizing socially sanctioned defense mechanisms. Ultimately, however, Devereux asserted that despite the fact that the shaman’s role is often to some degree culturally sanctioned, the behavioral and cognitive concomitants of shamanic practices are “ego dystonic”—that is, discordant with the maintenance of a healthy ego boundary—and “quite obviously culture dystonic”—that is, in strict opposition to those norms and values deemed necessary for the transmission and perpetuation of a given culture through time (1956, 29).
During this same period, the basis for a less exclusively pathological rendering of the shaman’s psychological state and therapeutic practice was advanced by the famous French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1963). Levi-Strauss argued that the therapeutic efficacy of shamanic practice is embedded in a “shamanic complex” that integrates a threefold experience: that of the shaman’s specific psychosomatic states, that of the suffering patient who undergoes a tangible bodily experience ensuring psycho-biological transformation, and the audience or public, who also participate through their social influence in effecting a cure (179). Drawing from psychoanalytic theory, Levi-
Strauss then outlined an argument that was based on the assumption that, although the shaman is potentially a neurotic (182), in his performance as healer, he serves as a “professional abreactor,” aiding the patient to intensely relive the initial situation or event that is held to be the etiological basis for the patient’s current condition (181).
Levi-Strauss further suggested that even though the shaman may display pathological thinking, based in subjective experiences that do not correspond to an objective reality, the shaman should still be viewed as an astute healer who is comparable to a modern psychoanalyst, in as much as he is able to provide a sufferer “with a language by means of which unexpressed, and otherwise inexpressible, psychic states can be immediately expressed” (198). This more positive orientation toward both shamanic states of consciousness and the therapeutic efficacy of shamanic practices through an explicit connection to psychoanalytic theory was of course also pursued by Carl Jung (see Dourley 1996).
A less pathological rendering of shamanic states of consciousness was also put forth by Mircea Eliade (1989 [1964]). Eliade saw shamans as individuals who, having undergone an initiatory crisis involving a period of illness or psychosis, filled a culturally valued role by interacting with the spirit world on behalf of their community. Anthony F. C. Wallace (1966) took a more or less complementary stance when he argued that although shamanism may have its roots in psychopathology, the cultural and social value associated with the shaman’s abilities to enter into trance states and effect cures for those in the community suffering from various forms of illness also had potentially positive effects for the shaman’s psychological well-being. According to Wallace, shamans are individuals who have suffered from multiple psychological and physiological disorders, and who without the community’s acceptance, garnered through their role as a recognized and valued healer, would certainly have developed more debilitating psychological imbalances such as those associated with schizophrenia.
Another key article supporting a more moderate viewpoint is found in Julian Silverman’s (1967) discussion of some similarities between shamanic states of consciousness and reactive
forms of schizophrenia. For instance, according to Silverman, the types of cognition and behavior associated with each results from a discernible patterning of psychological states (e.g., feelings of fear, guilt, impotence, and failure, leading to isolation and estrangement, leading to the narrowing of attention and sensory deprivation, leading to fusing of higher and lower referential processes, and resulting in an ensuing cognitive reorganization) (23). That said, Silverman further argued that the extent to which each form of cognition and behavior is variously interpreted as pathological or curative depends specifically on the cultural context in which it occurs.
One of the most telling arguments against a pathological view of shamanism to arise during this period is found in the context of Horacio Fabrega and Daniel Silver’s (1970) work with Zinacanteco shamans in Mexico. According to Fabrega and Silver, most of the research that links shamans with psychopathology has been grounded in unsystematic and impressionistic observations (471). In their study, which compared shamans and non-shamans in a single community along a number of differing social and psychological parameters, Fabrega and Silver found that in light of rigorous statistical data there is little evidence that shamans and non-shamans in Zinacanteco communities differ from each other substantially in terms of psychological criteria. Moreover, noting the great variation in the psychological characteristics of Zinacanteco shamans, Fabrega and Silver importantly suggested that this evidence for variability within the group should serve as a caution to those researchers who make assertions regarding the psychological homogeneity of such cultural subgroups as shamans.
From Diagnosing Pathology to Descriptive Phenomenology, and Beyond With the cultural and social changes that occurred during the 1960s and early 1970s (e.g., interest in Eastern philosophy and meditation, and the pervasive use of psychotropic drugs), there occurred an important shift in both academic and popular understandings of consciousness that significantly affected the way that shamanism was viewed by scholars interested in better understanding the states of consciousness characteristic of shamanic practices
(Atkinson 1992, 310). This resulted in what can be viewed as a general movement toward a more descriptive and less evaluative and diagnostic approach. The new approach sought to clarify the phenomenological properties of what Eliade had earlier termed shamanic ecstasy (1989). A number of works sought to sharply distinguish shamanic states of consciousness from those states of consciousness classified as pathological within the interpretive framework of Western psychology and psychiatry. These works also sought to discern the phenomenological specificity of the various forms of trance states that could be associated with shamanic practices cross-culturally (see Atkinson 1992, 310; Walsh 1997; Winkelman 2000).
In these more recent works, a key difference between shamanic and pathological states of consciousness was held to lie in the fact that shamans tend to have control of altered states of consciousness, entering and leaving them voluntarily. In these more recent works, individuals such as Ioan Lewis (1971), who compared shamanic trance to involuntary possession states, are criticized for failing to recognize the distinctive intentional nature of shamanic states of consciousness. Indeed, it is held that shamanic states of consciousness differ from psychopathological states precisely because of the fact that shamans voluntarily enter into these states of consciousness, creating a sharp contrast with the involuntary nature of those states of consciousness associated with individuals suffering from various forms of psychopathology (see Winkelman 2000, 79; Mi-trani 1992; Walsh 1995, 1997)
A more descriptive and less evaluative assessment of shamanic states of consciousness is also found in the work of scholars like Richard Noll (1983) who have sought to do systematic comparisons of the phenomenological properties of those states of consciousness associated with shamanic practice and schizophrenia as described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). According to these thinkers, there are distinct differences between shamanic and schizophrenic states of consciousness, not only in terms of the intentional and voluntary nature of these states, but also in terms of the affective, perceptual, and cognitive entailments associated with each. One such phenomenological distinction includes the fact
that shamans are able to discriminate between experiences had in alternative states of consciousness and those had in everyday life, a capacity that is not readily evident in schizophrenics (see also Winkelman 2000). Moreover, in contrast to schizophrenics, whose hallucinatory experiences are largely auditory, shamans tend to have experiences that are primarily visual in nature. When shamans do have auditory experiences, they are often of “a helpful and healing nature rather than the accusatory, intrusive, and paranoia inducing auditory experiences that are characteristic of schizophrenia” (Winkelman 2000, 80). In the same way, the emotions associated with shamanic practice are in general far more positive than those associated with schizophrenia. Schizophrenics tend to experience hallucinations as confusing and totally real, as well as frightening.
In response to accusations that shamans are individuals suffering from various dissociative disorders, including hysteria and hysterical neurosis, many of these more recent works draw a clear distinction. They point out that there is no evidence of amnesia, but rather a persistent self-awareness reported by shamans who enter into these states of consciousness, making shamanic states of consciousness radically different from experiences associated with hysterical and dissociative disorders. In those disorders, defense mechanisms are understood to block an individual’s awareness of psychologically disturbing conflicts (Winkelman 2000).
These same scholars also answer the often cited accusation that shamans are epileptics by pointing out that those behaviors comparable to epileptic seizure displayed by some shamans (shaking, tremors, apparent involuntary motions) occur primarily during voluntarily induced alternative states of consciousness. Moreover, they point out that problems associated with diagnosing shamans as epileptics also stem from the fact that this claim is most often based on shamans’ recollections of undergoing “fits” during their “initiation crises” (Walsh 1997). The difficulty with basing any diagnosis on recollection lies in the fact that in clinical situations the recollection of past illnesses has proven to be notoriously inaccurate, and therefore a shaman’s memory of undergoing “fits” cannot be used as a reliable basis for a clinical diagnosis of epilepsy (Walsh 1997, 105). In addition, many of these same thinkers suggest if these “shamanic fits”
were indeed generalized or grand-mal seizures, clinical data suggests that there would be no conscious memory of the epileptic attack for the shaman to recall at a later date. Finally, whereas organic epilepsy is usually a chronic condition, “shamanic fits” are reported to occur only at the specific occasion of the initiation crisis, following which they spontaneously disappear (Walsh 1997, 106-107).
Some scholars have also questioned the long held assumption that all shamans share distinctive personality types and psychological characteristics (Atkinson 1992, 309)—a perspective that is still evident in the work of a number of scholars who discuss in some detail the “nervous” and “hysterical” tendencies that are deemed to be characteristic psychological traits of practicing shamans. These scholars have failed to closely examine the phenomenological properties of specific individuals’ experiences while practicing shamanism, leaving their psychopathological interpretations of shamanic practices open to criticism for all too often conflating the shaman’s role with the shaman’s psychology (Mitrani 1992). Also, they have not taken into account that “it is very likely that there are as many different kinds of shamans as there are different kinds of personalities within the group in which they live” (Mi-trani 1992, 160).
Cultural Neurophysiological Perspectives During the late seventies and early eighties, a nonpathological rendering of shamanic states of consciousness was also established through a number of insights into the neurophysiology of ritually induced trance states (d’Aquili and Laughlin 1979; Lex 1979; Prince 1982; Winkelman 2000). The work of Barbara Lex (1979) and Eugene d’Aquili and Charles Laughlin (1979) explored the relationship between ritually induced trance states and alterations in the functioning of the autonomic nervous system. For instance, they suggested that participation in ritual activities often serves to affect the balance and functioning of participants’ autonomic nervous systems, which in turn may engender healing. Coining the phrase “symbolic penetration,” Laughlin and his colleagues (1990) have also extended this model to account for the often powerful psychophysiological effects of symbols in the context of ritual forms of healing cross-culturally. According
to these scholars, the symbolic imagery utilized by such religious practitioners as shamans works to directly affect alterations in the connectivity of neuronal pathways in the brain, which may in turn affect both the individual’s psycho-physiological response to illness and organization of lived experience.
Further insights into the neurophysiological effects of shamanic practices have been reviewed in a special edition of the journal Ethos (Prince 1982; see also Atkinson 1992 and Winkelman 2000), which importantly sets out to demonstrate how shamanic states of consciousness may be intimately associated with the release of endorphins, our brain’s endogenous opioid compounds, which produce euphoric, immune-enhancing, and analgesic effects. More recently, Michael Winkelman (2000) has provided an extensive review of the positive neurophysiological and psychoneuroimmunological effects of shamanic practice, ritual, and concomitant nonordinary states of consciousness. According to Winkelman, the positive and health-inducing properties of shamanic states of consciousness are tied to interhemispheric synchronization and coherence, limbic-cortical integration, and integration across the neuraxis that is effectively induced in conjunction with these alterations in conscious modalities.
Conclusion
There has been a long history of trying to understand the relationship between psychopathology and religious experience more generally—see for instance William James’s (1991) early writings on the “sick soul.” The literature on this subject includes debates over the merits of psychopathologically based explanations of religious and mystical behavior, explanations that range from multiple personality disorder (Bourguignon 1989) to obsessivecompulsive disorder (Dulaney and Fiske 1994) to anorexia (Banks 1996). The ultimate question raised by this literature is whether or not there exists a continuum of psychological propensities that various cultures parse in differing ways, such that individuals can be viewed as “pathological” or “normal” depending on the cultural context in which their propensities are nurtured.
As for shamanism, the weight of evidence seems to suggest that the cultures in which
shamanism is practiced do not often classify these individuals as mentally ill. Moreover, even if only Western criteria are used, according to phenomenological and neurophysiological assessments shamanic states of consciousness differ significantly from psychopathological states. Finally, there is abundant evidence for a strong “monophasic bias” (see Laughlin et al. 1990) in Western thought: nonordinary states of consciousness have been seen in negative terms, and normalcy tends to be defined in “reference to the rationality of ordinary [waking] consciousness” (Winkelman 2000, 78; see also Walsh 1997, 104). At the very least, then, it seems that those who want to see a relationship between shamanic experience and psychopathology must be especially careful to give a close, scientifically based look at the phenomenological, cultural, social, and neurophysiological underpinnings of shamanic states of consciousness.
C. Jason Throop Jennifer L. Dornan
See also: Afro-Brazilian Shamanism; Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Shamans;
Ethnocentrism and Shamanism; Healing and Shamanism; History of the Study of Shamanism; Neuropsychology of Shamanism; Psychology of Shamanism; Trance, Shamanic; Transformation; Visions and Imagery: Western Perspectives
References and further reading:
Ackerknecht, Erwin Heinz. 1943.
“Psychopathology, Primitive Medicine and Primitive Culture.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 14: 30—67.
Atkinson, Jane M. 1992. “Shamanism Today.” Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 307—330.
Banks, Caroline Giles. 1996. “’There is No Fat in Heaven’: Religious Asceticism and the Meaning of Anorexia Nervosa.” Ethos 24: 197-135.
Bogoras, Waldemar. 1907. “The Chuckchee Religion.” In The Chukchee. Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. 7. Leiden and New York: Brill and Stechert.
Bourguignon, Erika. 1989. “Multiple
Personality, Possession Trance, and the Psychic Unity of Mankind.” Ethos 17: 371-384.
d’Aquili, Eugene and Charles Laughlin. 1979. “Introduction.” In The Spectrum of Ritual.
Edited by E. G. d’Aquili, C. D. Laughlin, and J. McManus. New York: Columbia University.
Devereux, George. 1956. “Normal and Abnormal: The Key Problem of Psychiatric Anthropology.” In Some Uses of Anthropology: Theoretical and Applied. Edited by J. B. Casagrande and T. Gladwin.
Washington: Anthropological Society of Washington.
———. 1961. “Shamans as Neurotics.” American Anthropologist 63: 1088-1090.
Dourley, John P. 1996. “C. G. Jung’s Appropriation of Aspects of Shamanism.” Pp. 51-59 in Shamanism and Northern Ecology. Edited by Juha Pentikainen. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Dulaney, S., and A. P. Fiske. 1994. “Cultural Rituals and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Is There a Common Psychological Mechanism?” Ethos 22: 243-283.
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Fabrega, Horacio, Jr., and Daniel B. Silver. 1970. “Some Social and Psychological Properties of Zinacanteco Shamans.” Behavioral Science 15: 471-486.
James, William. [1902] 1991. The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Triumph Books.
Laughlin, Charles, et al. 1990. Brain, Symbol, and Experience. New York: Columbia University Press.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. [1949] 1963. Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books.
Lewis, Ioan M. 1971. Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism. New York: Penguin Books.
Lex, Barbara. 1979. “The Neurobiology of Ritual Trance.” In The Spectrum of Ritual. Edited by E. G. d’Aquili, C. D. Laughlin, and J. McManus. New York: Columbia University Press.
Linton, Ralph. 1956. Culture and Mental Disorders. Springfield, IL: C. C. Thomas.
Mitrani, Philippe. 1992. “A Critical Overview of the Psychiatric Approaches to Shamanism.” Diogenes 158 (Summer): 145-165.
Noll, Richard. 1983. “Shamanism and Schizophrenia: A State-Specific Approach to
the Schizophrenia Metaphor of Shamanic States.” American Ethnologist 10: 443—459.
Prince, Raymond. 1982. “Shamans and Endorphins: Hypothesis for a Synthesis.” Ethos 10, no. 4: 409—423.
Silverman, Julian. 1967. “Shamans and Acute Schizophrenia.” American Anthropologist 69: 21-31.
Spiro, Melford. 2001. “Cultural Determinism, Cultural Relativism, and the Comparative Study of Psychopathology.” Ethos 29, no. 2: 218-234.
Wallace, Anthony F. C. 1966. Religion: An Anthropological View. New York: Random House.
Walsh, Roger. 1995. “Phenomenological Mapping: A Method for Describing and Comparing States of Consciousness.” Transpersonal Psychology 27, no. 1: 25-56.
———. 1997. “The Psychological Health of Shamans: A Reevaluation.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65, no. 1: 101-124.
Winkelman, Michael. 2000. Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing. Westport: Bergin and Garvey.
PSYCHOPOMP
A psychopomp is a conductor or guide of the dead, someone who escorts the spirits of the dead to the place where they will spend their afterlife. Cultural myths concerning psychopomps are found throughout the world.
The shaman’s role as psychopomp is a direct extension of the shaman’s power to walk between the worlds. Both personal experience and training impact the shaman’s ability to conduct the soul to an appropriate afterlife when a person dies. Many shamanic initiations mimic the dying experience, and it is not unusual for a person who has a close brush with physical death at an early age to be chosen to become a shaman.
The souls of dead shamans may contact a person chosen to become a shaman in order to impart knowledge, power, and guidance. In Siberia, a new shaman becomes initiated through contact with the spirits of dead shamans and their spirit helpers (Eliade 1989, 34). Initiation by
dead shamans has been known to be common in South America also. Mircea Eliade noted that among the Bororo, a spirit chose the person who would become a shaman by making that person a receptacle for the spirit (1989, 92). Apinaye shamans were chosen by the spirits of relatives, who then put them in touch with other spirits (Eliade 1989, 83). Once a person had direct access to spirits, he or she became capable of doing a shaman’s work.
The shaman escorts the souls of the dead to protect the living as well as to aid the deceased. Due to the common belief that newly dead souls can haunt the living and cause all manner of trouble, the shaman’s ability to safely remove the departed person’s spirit to the afterlife is essential to societal welfare. In some cultures, professional mourners assist in placating the soul of the recently dead, and other people may play important roles in funeral ceremonies. But it is always a shaman who enters trance, leaves his or her body, and conducts the soul to its last home.
In the Tibetan region, the Na-khi and the Moso believed that the soul should rise to heaven, but that there were demons that would try to force the soul into hell. The mythical founder of Na-khi shamanism, Dto-mba Shi-lo, received the power to conquer demons and send souls to the realm of the gods. Dto-mba Shi-lo is the archetype of a psychopomp in this culture and is imitated by those who followed him. Na-khi shamans invoked Dto-mba Shi-lo before conducting souls through the nine infernal regions that must be crossed to have any chance of getting into heaven. Na-khi shamans left the soul in the ninth region; from there the soul ascended seven golden mountains and received the fruit of immortality from a sacred tree before entering heaven (Eliade 1989, 444-445).
Culturally held myths and cosmology are reflected in the shaman’s journeys while performing as a psychopomp. For example, if a people believe that the road of the dead scales a mountain and crosses a river, then the shaman must journey up the mountain and over the river to escort the dead on their way. The Bakairi of South America believed the shaman is the person able to safely do this because the shaman already knows the way (Eliade 1989, 326). Among the Manacica of South America, the shaman is reported to have undertaken the journey after the funeral ceremony. This jour
ney was considered to be very dangerous, fraught with difficulties and challenges that would be impossible for the unaccompanied soul, hence the role of the shaman was altruistic in that the shaman took a risk to benefit the deceased (Eliade 1989, 326).
Different props and procedures may be involved in the shaman’s psychopomp work. Indonesian shamans may use a boat in the ecstatic journey that transports the deceased to the afterlife. Among the Lolo of Yunan Province, China, the shaman priest read prayers describing the beauty of heaven at the deathbed. During the funeral rite, the shaman opened the way to heaven by removing beams from the house roof and exposing the sky (Eli-ade 1989, 355, 441).
Mongolian shamans, historically and currently, work with the dead in several ways. In addition to sending souls to the Lower World in the role of psychopomp, Mongolian shamans also work with the souls of the dead that are still in this world. Shamans still travel to the Lower World to commune with the dead, as well as to find and return the soul of someone who died to this world (Shirokogoroff 1935, 142; Sarangarel 2000, 53). Part of the variety of work with dead souls in Mongolia and Siberia may be related to the belief that people have three separate souls—
the suld soul, the suns soul, and the ami soul. (Sarangerel 2000, 50-54). All work with the spirits of the dead is considered extremely dangerous, but it can be undertaken by shamans because of their spirit helpers and allies.
Shamans are considered to be dwellers in two realities, that of the visible world and the invisible. Their ability to peer into the invisible world and take action there gives them the power to be psychopomps.
Trisha Lepp
See also: Mongolian Funeral Ceremony References and further reading:
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original English edition, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964. Originally published in French as Le Chamanisme et les techniques archaiques de l’extase. Paris: Librairie Payot, 1951.
Sarangerel (Julie Ann Stewart). 2000. Riding Windhorses: A Journey into the Heart of Mongolian Shamanism. Rochester, VT: Destiny Books.
Shirokogoroff, Sergei M. 1935. Psychomental Complex of the Tungus. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trebuer and Company.
R
RITUAL
See “Magic,” Power, and Ritual in Shamanism
ROCK ART AND SHAMANISM
Rock art consists of motifs painted (pictographs) or engraved (petroglyphs) on natural landscape surfaces, such as cave walls and ceilings, open cliff faces or boulders. Rock art is nearly ubiquitous among hunter-gatherer groups living in regions containing natural rock outcrops. Because shamanism is also commonly associated with hunter-gatherer cultures, it has long been assumed that rock art too might be shamanistic in origin. Ethnological and ethnographic studies, along with archaeological analyses (based in part on neuropsychology), support this hypothesis, although shamanistic rock art is more prevalent on some continents and in some regions than others.
Ethnological studies and ethnographic syntheses of hunter-gatherer rock art have been completed primarily in the Americas, Australia, and southern Africa, which is to say those regions where significant hunter-gatherer groups existed at the time of recent European contact. Robert Layton (2001) has usefully distinguished between totemic and shamanistic rock art traditions in these regions. Totemic traditions include those where the creation and use of conventionalized rock art images is tied to some type of group membership, such as a totem, moiety, or clan; often totemic rock art is created as part of increase rituals. Shamanistic traditions, in contrast, are associated with shamanistic belief systems, which themselves typically involve direct individual interaction with the supernatural world through an altered state of conscious or trance. Shamanistic tra
ditions commonly include or emphasize the depiction of hallucinatory imagery resulting from experiences of altered states of consciousness.
Although Australian aboriginal cultures had ritual practitioners who used shamanistic tech-niques—“men of high degree” (Elkin 1945)— much aboriginal religion was totemic rather than shamanistic. The majority of recent Australian aboriginal rock art, as a result, is interpreted as totemic in nature (Layton 1992), although it has been argued that one tradition of purely prehistoric Australian rock art, discussed below, is shamanistic in origin.
African Rock Art
Synthesis of the ethnographic record for the San (or Bushmen) of southern Africa has demonstrated the fundamentally shamanistic nature of the rock art produced by these hunting and gathering peoples (Lewis-Williams 1981, 2002a). San shamanism emphasized the communal trance dance where, through repetitive clapping, singing and dancing, and hyperventilation, numerous individuals in the group fell into an altered state of consciousness in order to perform cures and other supernatural tasks. Although the Kalahari San still practice these rituals, the Kalahari itself is effectively devoid of rocks, and its residents do not make rock art. San rock art is thus found in other portions of southern Africa where, during the last 2,000 years, the San were isolated in marginal mountainous and desert environments by Bantu-speaking pastoralists.
The Drakensberg Mountains of southern Africa contain a particularly rich and detailed corpus of finely painted rock art, found on the walls of large, open rock shelters that also served as habitation sites. These pictographs are linked to the trance dance and the supernatural experiences that resulted from it, with shamans
responsible for painting the designs. For paint the shamans used, in part, the blood of the bull eland in their pigment, reflecting the centrality of this large antelope to their symbolism, including its dominance as a motif in the rock art and this animal’s role as an alter ego of their trickster creator deity, /Kaggen, thereby suggesting that it was extraordinarily potent. Use of this blood infused the painted images with the antelope’s supernatural potency, or n/um, allowing the paintings to serve as a kind of storehouse of this power. During the trance dance, shaman dancers would turn to face the painted images, heightening their own n/um as the power in the eland’s blood flowed from the images to the shamans themselves (LewisWilliams and Dowson 1989).
San rock art, as a result, is dominated by depictions of the eland; human figures shown with ritual accouterments; ritual scenes, especially of the trance dance and rainmaking; and therianthropes—conflations of different animal species into supernatural beings. Included are “flying-bucks,” combinations of birds and antelopes, and, especially, combinations of humans and antelopes. Among these are examples showing the hooves, forelegs, and faces of antelope combined with human rear legs and torso, posed in the bent-over and arms-back posture characteristic of San shamans going into a trance, and bleeding profusely from the nostrils, another common occurrence during the trance dance (Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1989). The quantity and detail of San rock art in fact is much greater than the sometimes fragmentary evidence provided by the ethnographic record. The art in such cases has provided a kind of graphic ethnography that has greatly amplified our understanding of shamanism among these now largely extinct indigenous groups.
North American Rock Art
Much of the hunter-gatherer rock art in North America is shamanistic in origin, with the ethnographic record on shamanistic rock art particularly rich in the Far West (Whitley 2000). This includes the Californian, Great Basin, and Columbia Plateau culture areas, each of which was occupied by hunter-gatherer cultures into the late nineteenth century. The ethnography in the Far West illustrates the po
tential diversity in origins and meanings of shamanistic rock art, in part reflecting differences in the social position of the shaman in various societies more generally. This diversity refutes any argument that shamanism necessarily implies a monolithic or unitary rock art interpretation. Throughout this broad area, for example, rock art was made by shamans at the conclusions of their vision quests to portray their experiences during altered states of consciousness. Yet these vision quests themselves could vary in nature and intent. Commonly, and probably initially, they were undertaken to obtain supernatural power, which was usually manifest in an animal spirit helper. Regionally important animal species, accordingly, are common components of the art and typically these portray the spirit helpers. Stylized human figures, sometimes in dancing postures or with elaborate ritual gear, are also common, illustrating the shaman. But vision quests might also be undertaken to make rain, find lost objects, cure the sick, control game, and, especially, to bewitch an enemy. Each of these may be illustrated in the art in its own way.
In the Great Basin, for example, the bighorn sheep was the special spirit helper of the rain shaman. Because the shaman and the shaman’s helper were considered indistinguishable, and because entry into a trance to make rain was considered as a metaphoric “death,” “killed” bighorn sheep motifs served as indications of a shaman’s ritual self-sacrifice, through trance, intended to make rain. Rainmaking is understandably emphasized in the Great Basin, especially in the dry Coso Range region of eastern California (adjacent to Death Valley), which contains perhaps 100,000 petroglyphs, the majority of which are bighorn sheep. Ethnographic accounts indicate that shamans traveled from great distances to the Cosos, apparently to obtain this special power and to make rain. The very large Coso sites were thus communally used, even if for private rituals undertaken at great distances from an individual’s home territory. In the nearby southern Sierra Nevada to the west, in contrast, shamans painted the spirits and events they experienced during their altered states of consciousness at small sites that they owned, which sometimes were handed down patrilineally when shamanism ran in a family line (as commonly occurred). These small sites were often adjacent
to or within a village, even though as potentially dangerous places of power they were avoided by the village’s inhabitants (Whitley 2000).
In both cases the supernatural world was considered distinct from the mythic past, and little or no connection existed between mythology and rock art sites, visionary experiences and shamans. More specifically, the art does not portray mythic actors or events. Among Yuman speakers along the Colorado River Valley, however, the supernatural world of the shaman was intimately tied to the mythic past, with the shaman acquiring supernatural power by reexperiencing the creation of the world by the culture hero Mastamho during a vision. Rather than spirit helpers, Yuman-speaking shamans’ power was embodied in a vision of the “essence” or “pattern” of the creation, and the acquisition of a song recounting this etiological event. The primary vision quest site for Yuman-speaking shamans, accordingly, was at the foot of Avikwa’ame, “Spirit Mountain,” Newberry Peak in southern Nevada. This is the home of Mastamho and the spot where creation took place, and it is the biggest rock art site in this region. But note that (for reasons discussed below) the images created by shamans to portray their visions of creation do not represent identifiable actors or composed events, but instead are intricate geometric patterns, just as their origin songs are made up mostly of nonsense syllables rather than a narrative account of events.
Rock art was also created during shamanistic puberty initiations in southwestern California, along the Colorado River, and on the Columbia Plateau. In southwestern California these initiations involved formal group rituals for cohorts of either boys or girls. These ceremonies concluded by ritual races to a special rock where the spirit helpers, received in their visionary experiences during the initiation, were painted. Along the Colorado River, boys took long ritual runs across the desert, during which their nasal septa were pierced, they had a visionary experience, and they created rock art at designated locations.
On the Columbia Plateau, in contrast, vision questing was both very important and common for all members of society, but was undertaken as a solitary event. Individual boys or girls, usually under the direction of their parents, would
go on a vision quest to prescribed, isolated locations. The quest would commonly occur over a period of days, sometimes involving trips to high locations (such as Mount Hood, Oregon), where rock cairns and alignments were built as part of the physical exertion required of the supplicants. The culmination would occur with the painting or engraving of rock art, often at a relatively low spot on the landscape, intended to portray the spirit helper the seeker had received. Non-shaman adults would also conduct vision quests during life crises, such as the birth of a child, in order to reinvigorate their potency. Shamans of course also vision quested in solitary rites, although shamans’ assistants were in some areas responsible for repainting the shamans’ motifs when these became faint. Columbia Plateau rock art sites were sometimes associated with cemeteries and sometimes with locations of mythic events. But the supernatural world visited by individual supplicants does not appear to have related to mythology or ancestors, and there does not seem to have been any necessary distinction between those sites used by shamans and those used by others (Whitley 2000).
Despite these regional, social and functional variations, some characteristics appear to have been shared by the various rock art traditions in the Far West of North America. Included is the fact that, everywhere, rock art sites were considered to be portals into the supernatural realm. Similarly, the motifs resulting from shamanistic traditions are almost invariably representations of visionary imagery, which of course can be strongly influenced by cultural and personal expectations and training.
The importance of visionary imagery in shamanistic rock art has particularly important implications for the study of prehistoric rock art—that is, bodies of art that have no link to the ethnographic record, such as the Paleolithic cave art of western Europe, dating from about 33,000 to 10,000 years before the present. Likewise, research on visionary imagery has assisted in the identification of the time depth of shamanistic traditions in those regions, such as far western North America and southern Africa, where the recent art is ethno-graphically known to be shamanistic. Use of neuropsychological information on trance has provided the key to this research (LewisWilliams 2001).
Rock Art and Altered States of Consciousness
For over fifty years, neuropsychologists had observed regularities in the forms of the mental images experienced by individuals during altered states of consciousness. In the late 1970s, archaeologists began to notice correlations between characteristics of hallucinations, as described by clinicians, and rock art motifs. These clinical reports, along with cross-cultural observations, were synthesized by David LewisWilliams and Thomas Dowson (1988) into a neuropsychological model (called the N-P Model) of the mental imagery of altered states of consciousness. This model is applicable cross-culturally because all humans share the same neurological and neurochemical systems.
The N-P Model describes the form—but not personal or cultural meaning—of the images resulting from trance and provides a predicted range of image types and characteristics that can be used to test if graphic art in fact portrays visionary experiences. The model has three components: (1) seven common entoptic forms, (2) seven principles of perception during altered states of consciousness, and (3) three progressive stages of trance. The entoptic images (which include phosphenes or form constants) are geometric light patterns that are generated in an individual’s neural and optical systems. They include grids, dot patterns, parallel lines, zigzags, filigrees, nested curves, and concentric circles. The seven principles of perception are based on the fact that the mental images of an altered state of consciousness are not normal vision of exterior events but instead are at least partly images in the mind that are unconstrained by real world physics. The images, hence, may be depicted in standard fashion, or they may reduplicate, rotate, fragment, integrate with, superimpose on, or juxtapose against other images. Experiences of altered states of consciousness also commonly progress through three stages: Initially the entoptics are perceived alone; next they are construed or interpreted as culturally or personally meaningful iconic images; finally, full-blown iconic imagery is seen. The principles of perception apply during each of these three stages.
Initially Lewis-Williams and Dowson (1988) used the N-P Model to test whether European Upper Paleolithic rock art was shamanistic in
origin. They concluded that at least some of it was. This conclusion has been supported by subsequent analyses (Clottes and LewisWilliams 1998; Layton 2000; Lewis-Williams 2002b). The N-P Model has also been applied to the European Neolithic (Bradley 1989; Dronfield 1996), leading to the inference that the imagery on passage tombs was inspired by altered states of consciousness.
The somatic and emotional effects of trance have also been examined, allowing for the identification of a set of common metaphors for an otherwise ineffable altered state of consciousness (Whitley 1994, 1998). These metaphors correspond to the widely identified shamanic themes of death and rebirth, aggression, flight, sexual arousal, and bodily transformation. In this case, however, they are linked to a predictable range of embodied experiences that occur during trance, rather than to some nebulous and archaic symbolic substrate. In combination with the expectations of the N-P Model, the identification of these metaphors has helped establish the time depth of shamanistic rock art in those areas where its presence is known ethnographically. Notable in this regard is far western North America, where neuropsychological, iconographic, and archaeological evidence have been combined to suggest that shamanistic rock art was created for at least 10,000 years (Whitley et al. 1999). In southern Africa, similar evidence suggests that shamanistic rock art was made for 27,000 years (LewisWilliams 1984). And rock art analysis in northern Australia, based partly on the N-P Model and the somatic effects of altered states of consciousness, indicates that the so-called Dynamic figures, dating to approximately 10,000 years before the present, are shamanistic in origin (Chippindale, Smith, and Tagon 2000), despite the fact that later art in this same region is apparently totemic.
As this last circumstance suggests, not all rock art worldwide is shamanistic, nor is all huntergatherer rock art necessarily shamanistic. Indeed, some hunter-gatherer groups made and used shamanistic as well as non-shamanistic rock art, more or less simultaneously. Yuman-speaking tribes along the Colorado River in California, for example, created petroglyphs in two shamanistic contexts, shamans’ vision quests and puberty initiations, both of which display the kinds of imagery expected in trance-
derived art. But these tribes also made large earth-figures, or geoglyphs, that portrayed and commemorated myths. These were used in group ritual pilgrimages that traced the paths of mythic actors across the landscape and, given their narrative nature and function, they understandably lack the kinds of graphic features predicted by the N-P Model. Still, in regions where hunter-gatherer religions were entirely or predominantly shamanistic, shamanistic rock art is the norm. Moreover it is clear that in western Europe, southern Africa, and the Americas, the earliest rock art is shamanistic, signaling the importance of shamanism in the earliest religious beliefs and ritual practices of anatomically modern humans.
David S. Whitley
See also: !Kung Healing, Ritual, and Possession; Archaeology of Shamanism; Art and Shamanism; Australian Aboriginal Shamanism; Entoptic Images; Initiation; Neuropsychology of Shamanism; Peruvian Shamans; Yokuts Shamanism; Yuman Shamanism
References and further reading:
Bradley, Richard. 1989. “Deaths and Entrances: A Contextual Analysis of Megalithic Tombs.” Current Anthropology 30: 68—75.
Chippindale, Christopher, Benjamin Smith, and Paul S.C. Ta^on. 2000. “Visions of Dynamic Power: Archaic Rock Paintings, Altered States of Consciousness and ’Clever Men’ in Western Arnhem Land (NT), Australia.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10: 63—101.
Clottes, Jean, and J. David Lewis-Williams.
1998. The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
Dronfield, Jeremy. 1996. “Entering Alternative Realities: Cognition, Art, and Architecture in Irish Passage Tombs.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 6: 37—72.
Elkin, A. P. 1945. Aboriginal Men of High Degree. Sydney: Australasian Publishing.
Layton, Robert L. 1992. Australian Rock Art: A New Synthesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2000. “Shamanism, Totemism, and Rock Art: ’Les chamanes de la prehistoire’ in the Context of Rock Art Research.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10: 169-186.
———. 2001. “Ethnographic and Symbolic Analyses.” Pp. 311-331 in Handbook of Rock Art Research. Edited by D. S. Whitley. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Lewis-Williams, J. David. 1981. Believing and Seeing: Symbolic Meanings in Southern San Rock Paintings. New York: Academic Press.
———. 1984. “Ideological Continuities in Prehistoric Southern Africa: The Evidence of Rock Art.” Pp. 225-252 in Past and Present in Hunter-Gatherer Studies. Edited by C. Schrire. New York: Academic Press.
———. 2001. “Brainstorming Images: Neuropsychology and Rock Art.” Pp. 332-360 in Handbook of Rock Art Research. Edited by D. S. Whitley. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
———. 2002a. A Cosmos in Stone: Interpreting Religion and Society Through Rock Art. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
———. 2002b. The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art. London: Thames and Hudson.
Lewis-Williams, J. David, and Thomas A. Dowson. 1988. “The Signs of All Times: Entoptic Phenomena in Upper Paleolithic Rock Art.” Current Anthropology 29: 201-245.
———. 1989. Images of Power: Understanding Bushman Rock Art. Johannesburg: Southern Book.
Whitley, David S. 1994. “Shamanism, Natural Modeling and the Rock Art of Far Western North America.” Pp. 1-43 in Shamanism and Rock Art in North America. Edited by S. Turpin. San Antonio, TX: Rock Art Foundation, Inc., Special Publication 1.
———. 1998. “Cognitive Neuroscience, Shamanism and the Rock Art of Native California.” Anthropology of Consciousness 9: 22-36.
———. 2000. The Art of the Shaman: Rock Art of California. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Whitley, David S., Ronald I. Dorn, Joseph M. Simon, Robert Rechtman, and Tamara K. Whitley. 1999. “Sally’s Rockshelter and the Archaeology of the Vision Quest.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9: 221-247.
SORCERY
See Witchcraft and Sorcery in Shamanism
SOUL RETRIEVAL
Soul retrieval is the practice of recovering and restoring lost soul parts to the person who lost them. The practice is related to the belief that through trauma, abuse, voluntary surrender, soul theft, or black magic, pieces of a person’s spirit may be lost. The idea of soul loss is accepted by some modern psychologists as well as by traditional tribal shamans.
The essence of soul retrieval is the shaman’s use of the altered state of consciousness referred to as journeying. The shaman, who can be male or female, journeys into nonordinary reality to find the missing parts, heal them if necessary, persuade them to return, and bring the parts back to be restored to the client experiencing soul loss. Restoring the lost soul to the client is believed to increase that person’s level of energy, to cure disease, and to recover memories associated with the lost soul part.
Both traditional shamans and modern urban practitioners believe disease results from soul loss. Traditional shamans believe soul loss creates a hole in the person’s spirit, and that a psychic intrusion can invade the weakened spirit, leading to physical disease. For this reason, an extraction is often performed before the soul retrieval. Traditional shamans also recognize that apathy, depression, amnesia, and other psychological illnesses can result from soul loss.
Traditional shamans who have practiced soul retrieval techniques include Native Americans, notably the Coast Salish, Tlingit, and other Puget Sound tribes, as well as the Crow and
other Plains Indian people. The concepts of soul loss and soul retrieval are also widespread throughout Siberia and South America, particularly in the Amazon and Andean regions. Some traditional shamans distinguish between a “free soul,” which is capable of taking flight away from the body, and the “life soul,” which sustains physical life (Hultkrantz 1992, 66, 67). If a person is in a coma, for example, the traditional shaman will assume that the free soul is wandering loose or held captive by a practitioner of black magic.
Mircea Eliade noted that some shamans, such as the Buryat, attempt to call the soul back before going out to look for it. If the soul does not come back of its own volition, the shaman will descend to the land of the dead, recapture the soul, and bring it back (Eliade 1989). Calling lost souls is not confined to human sickness alone. The Karen of Burma use the technique of imploring the soul to return to a crop of rice to treat crop failure (Eliade 1989).
Traditional shamans will go into trance to diagnose the problem affecting a client. If the shaman discovers that soul loss is at the root of the client’s problem, she will perform a soul retrieval. The shaman journeys to the Underworld to recover the lost part, always with the help of power animals, spirit helpers, or other guides. Once located, the lost soul parts may require persuasion or outright trickery to return with the shaman. The shaman may cajole or offer gifts to the soul part in exchange for its cooperation. The shaman may capture the soul parts in a spirit catcher or with her hands, or the soul part may return with the shaman voluntarily.
On returning to her body, the shaman takes the recaptured soul parts and blows them into the client, typically into the crown of the head, the heart, or the abdominal area. A ceremony
A woman who has become possessed after hypnotic chants and drumming, Haiti, ca. 1950. The men on either side are assistants to the high priest, or houngan, and help to guide the woman through the unseen world. Voudou spirits are usually good. (Bradley Smith/Corbis)
to ensure that the lost parts don’t take flight again is often performed. The client who receives the shaman’s services may also be required to perform a task, complete a ritual, or tender an offering in thanks for the return of the lost soul parts.
Some traditional cultures believe that soul parts can be stolen, usually as a result of sorcery or black magic. If untreated, the person weakened by the act of soul theft may become ill and die. The shaman called upon to rescue soul
parts taken by force may find himself wrestling with the thief during the journey. The shaman calls on the power of his spirit helpers to assist him in defeating the soul thief, rescuing the lost soul parts, and returning the parts to the victim. If the shaman is not strong enough to accomplish this task, he may die during the journey or soon after. The belief that soul theft is possible is not common to all cultures practicing shamanism and is rejected outright by most urban shamanic practitioners.
Modern urban shamans usually subscribe to the traditional shaman’s beliefs that soul loss can cause disease. However, contemporary psychological theories, particularly the concepts of self-integration and individuation, often have a greater impact on the urban shaman’s practice of soul retrieval. There are classically trained, licensed counselors who use soul retrieval as an adjunct to conventional psychotherapeutic techniques. There are also both licensed and unlicensed shamanic counselors who practice healing techniques that involve trance states as the core of their work.
Carl Jung’s concept of the unconscious opened the door for modern psychotherapists to examine less orthodox curative techniques. As psychologists began to understand the link between the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious aspects of the mind, the use of altered states of consciousness as a means of accessing wisdom and memories became more commonly practiced in the psychotherapeutic community. Some psychologists and anthropologists theorize that the shaman enters the collective unconscious while in the altered state of consciousness known as shamanic journeying. The shaman, as well as the psychologist’s client, may access race wisdom and experience instinctual drives directly while in trance.
The use of altered states of consciousness has emerged as a significant adjunct to more conventional talking therapies. Hypnosis, neurolinguistic programming, guided meditations, and now shamanic journeying are becoming accepted methods of assisting clients in making changes in their lives. Soul retrieval is a practice that makes use of the altered state of consciousness and the nurturing of the counseling relationship.
One influential proponent of soul retrieval in psychotherapy is Sandra Ingerman, a leading teacher and practitioner of soul retrieval in psychotherapeutic counseling. Her book Soul Retrieval is an anecdotal work that describes the practice of soul retrieval in detail and includes many stories of clients who experienced psychological healing after participating in soul retrieval. Ingerman pointed out that for the psychologist, the soul parts are lost in the undifferentiated region called the unconscious, from which the client recovers disassociated contents. (Ingerman 1991, 20). Ingerman’s book helped further the examination of
shamanic healing techniques within the conventional world of psychotherapy.
A more recent examination of shamanic healing appears in Jeanette Gagan’s work. Gagan outlined the wounding of the infant psyche and concludes that parts of the psyche are sequestered from conscious recall as a result of early wounding. In order to complete the developmental task linked to these early childhood traumas, Gagan teaches her clients to do shamanic journeying. Gagan proposed a new branch of modern psychotherapy, which she calls shamanic psychotherapeutics (Gagan 1998, 93).
Gagan’s practice involves teaching clients how to engage in shamanic journeying. The journey is recorded and analyzed by both client and practitioner in the context of the client’s healing process. Gagan noted that this practice generally leads to faster insight into psychological issues confronting the client. The expression of instinctual drives and repressed emotional states in the safe context of journeying allows clients to release emotional patterns that interfere with developmental processes. Destructive emotional states find expression in and are contained by the boundaries of the journeying experience. Power animals and other internal allies found during the journey can take the place of external nurturing sources that failed to meet needs for bonding in earlier life.
The practice of soul retrieval gives the client the impetus to move forward. The soul retrieval itself demonstrates to the client that he is worthy of effort and attention. The shaman takes personal risks on the client’s behalf, facing frightening phenomena in nonordinary reality in order to find, heal, and return lost soul parts. The ritual practice of soul retrieval fills the client’s need to be the center of attention, cared for, and nurtured. When returned soul parts symbolize repressed aspects of the psyche, the client is given permission to allow those aspects of self to manifest in his personality. This process furthers self-integration and individualization.
Contemporary traditional shamans still practice soul retrieval with the same beneficial effects that urban shamans provide for their clients. Soul retrieval continues to gain acceptance as part of the repertoire of trance-based practices used by modern psychotherapists. New studies of the way the brain processes ex
perience, patterns of activity during altered states of consciousness, and the long-term effects of using soul retrieval and trance to heal psychological dysfunction demonstrate the viability of shamanic practices in the modern world.
Trisha Lepp
See also: Core Shamanism and Neo
Shamanism; Healing and Shamanism;
Neuropsychology of Shamanism;
Psychology and Shamanism; Urban Shamanism
References and further reading:
Eliade, Mircea. 1989. Reprint. Shamanism:
Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. London: Penguin Arkana. Original French edition, Paris: Librairie Payot, 1951.
Gagan, Jeannette. 1998. Journeying—Where Shamanism and Psychology Meet. Santa Fe, NM: Rio Chama Publications.
Halifax, Joan. 1982. Shaman: The Wounded Healer. New York: Crossroad.
Harner, Michael. 1990. The Way of the Shaman.
2d ed. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco.
Hultkrantz, Ake. 1992. Shamanic Healing and Ritual Drama. New York: Crossroad.
Ingerman, Sandra. 1991. Soul Retrieval:
Mending the Fragmented Self. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco.
———. 1994. Welcome Home: Following Your Spirit’s Journey Home. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco.
SPIRIT POSSESSION
Spirit possession, the intrusion or influence of an external spirit, is closely related to shamanism, but the nature of this relationship is debated. Some scholars believe that spirit possession is a type or attribute of shamanism, whereas others believe that spirit possession and shamanism are essentially different though related phenomena. The degree of their relationship depends to a large degree on how each is defined. Spirit possession, like shamanism, is used to describe a wide range of ethnographic phenomena, and the term is often used in imprecise ways. Erika Bourguignon (1973 and
1976) and others have pointed out that spirit possession cannot be defined in terms of certain behaviors, states, and personal experiences in themselves, but rather in terms of the cultural interpretations of those behaviors, states, and experiences. These cultural interpretations vary from culture to culture, and often within a particular culture as well. Modern Western society is often uncomfortable with the concept of possession and tends to reduce it to other types of explanations: medical, psychological, sociological, and the like. Nonetheless, the concept of spirit possession is widely found throughout the world, both in the past and the present. Moreover, contrary to Western scientific expectation, belief in it seems to be increasing rather than decreasing (Behrend and Luig 1999).
It is not easy to provide a definition of spirit possession that will apply in all cultural contexts. The most general definition speaks of the concept of spirit possession as a cultural explanation for perceived changes in a human being in terms of the intrusion of an external spirit. Changes in other animate or inanimate beings or things may also be explained in this man-ner—thus perceived changes in an animal or even a plant or object such as a stone may be explained in terms of spirit intrusion. Most studies of spirit possession, however, focus on possession experienced by human beings. Similarly, whereas an alien spirit may possess a dead human body, most studies are interested in the possession of a living person.
The form and degree of spirit intrusion may vary greatly. The intrusion may be viewed as the spirit’s inhabiting the human body and even taking it over completely, so that the actions and speech of the possessed human is that of the spirit rather than that of the human being. However, possession can also be viewed simply as the spirit’s exerting control or influence over a person, which leads to states, abilities, or actions that the person would not otherwise exhibit. Bourguignon observed that possession can involve “alterations in consciousness or in capacity” (1973, 15). Hence possession is often used as an explanation for illness, fortune or misfortune, and the like, as well as for altered forms of consciousness. Many scholars of possession use the term trance to refer to altered consciousness, but as Vincent Crapanzano pointed out, trance is merely the
most common form of altered consciousness associated with spirit possession, not the only form (1977, 7-8).
Altered states of consciousness, including trance, however, are not always explained as possession. Scholars have noted that there are mystical, supernatural, or religious explanations as well as nonmystical, naturalistic, nonreligious explanations, and that both can coexist in the same culture. Nonmystical explanations include modern Western psychiatric and psychological or physiological explanations, but non-mystical interpretations can also be found in indigenous non-Western cultures. For instance, Ioan Lewis pointed out that the East African Samburu interpret certain trance states exhibited by young warriors as an emotional expression of assertive masculinity (as do other related groups such as the Masai) (Lewis 1989, 35-36).
Many scholars have observed that the most common type of mystical explanation besides spirit possession is that of the absence or journey of the affected individual’s soul, an aspect of it, or (in cases in which humans are believed to possess multiple souls) one of the individual’s souls. This explanation is often connected with shamanism. Lewis pointed out that the explanations of possession and soul loss can both exist in the same culture, and that in some cases at least some degree of soul loss may be seen as necessary for possession to take place. In the case of Haitian Voudou, for example, a possessing spirit is believed to displace one aspect of the human soul known as the gros bon ange (big good angel). Lewis disagreed, however, with Luc de Heusch’s suggestion that soul loss, or a depossession of the self, is always a precondition for possession (Lewis 1989, 40).
Spirits that engage in possession include a wide range of spirit types and characters. They include the souls or ghosts of once living people, both ancestors and unrelated persons from both inside and outside the society. Some are supernatural entities that have never been human beings. These spirits may be conceived as benevolent or malevolent (such as angels or demons), though many are more ambiguous in character, being harmful in some circumstances and helpful in others. Many can bring their human associates supernatural gifts of healing, divination, and ability to communicate and interact with the spiritual realm and to manipu
late fortune and misfortune to achieve their desires for themselves and others.
There are also various ways that societies view and deal with spirit possession, often depending on the character of the spirit involved. In some cases, possession is sought or encouraged as part of the group’s essential public religious practices. This is often the case where the spirit is seen as benevolent, as with possession by the Holy Spirit in some Christian Protestant denominations (e.g., the Pentecostals), though in some cases possession by demons is also desirable in certain ritual contexts (e.g., Balinese religion). Spirit possession may also be sought if the possessed acts as a spirit medium who can communicate messages to and from the spiritual world. If a spirit comes uninvited, however, especially to private individuals in nonritual contexts, the response may vary considerably. If the spirit is seen as malevolent or otherwise undesirable, it is often exorcised (forced to leave the person). On the other hand, if the spirit can be useful, a relationship may be cultivated with the spirit. In many cases the spirit may be initially harmful to the human victim, but the nature of the relationship can be changed. Hence the spirit is often kept but tamed or domesticated so that it can be used for beneficial purposes, or at least no longer harms its human associate. The latter is also trained how to be the host of the spirit and often learns how to be a spirit medium.
Gilbert Rouget (1985) has mapped out a series of useful contrasts that Mircea Eliade, Raymond Firth, and other scholars have made between what they call true shamanism and spirit possession: (1) Whereas in shamanism the human soul journeys to visit the realm of the spirits, in spirit possession the spirits come to visit humans. (2) Whereas the shaman is a master of the spirits and controls those embodied within her, the spirits control the one who is possessed by them. (3) Whereas the shaman’s interaction with the spirits is voluntary, this interaction is involuntary on the part of someone who is possessed. Rouget admitted that there are intermediate cases where the spiritual encounter involves elements of both shamanism and possession, as well as cases where the same individual may experience both shamanistic and possessive episodes, but he maintained that the difference between them is still fundamental. Many other scholars, however, believe that the
distinction is too rigid to describe what individuals actually experience (e.g., Crapanzano 1977, 10). Ioan M. Lewis (1989) pointed out that a spirit medium with possessive spirits is essentially a shaman, and a shaman is initially a possessed patient. What Rouget outlined as distinctive contrasts Lewis saw merely as different stages in an individual’s spiritual career. Individuals start out as involuntary patients who do not control the spirits that afflict them, and gradually learn to domesticate the spirits so that they can control them and interact with them voluntarily as healers.
The frequency of spirit possession beliefs among the world’s many cultures has been examined by a group of scholars from Ohio State University, directed by Erika Bourguignon. Using a sample of 488 societies from all areas of the world drawn from George Peter Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas, they found that 74 percent had possession beliefs. In terms of geographic regions, the most possession beliefs occurred among the cultures of the Insular Pacific area and East Eurasia and the least among the indigenous cultures of North America (although the latter figure was still considerable, at 52 percent). The Ohio State group also examined the distribution of trance states and found that trance interpreted as possession was most prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa and the cir-cum-Mediterranean area (Bourguignon 1973, 17, 19).
Possession is important, not only in many indigenous religions, but also in many syncretic religions that have developed from the interaction of world religions with indigenous religious concepts. Among these are a number of syncretic possession cults that have developed from the interaction of Christianity and Islam with indigenous African spirit beliefs and practices. In Latin America and the Caribbean, new Afro-American religions of great creativity and vitality have resulted from the combination of African, and some Native American, religious traits with Catholicism. Among the best known are Voudou (often referred to as voodoo) in Haiti, Santeria in Cuba, and a number of Afro-Brazilian religions such as Candomble, Xango, and Umbanda. The importance of these religions, (sometimes considered cults) is often underestimated. They play a major role in Latin American and Caribbean society. For example, almost all of the Haitian population practices
Voudou, and in 1977 O’Gorman estimated that one third of the Brazilian population practiced some form of Afro-Brazilian religion (O’Gorman 1977, 25). In addition, many of these neo-African religions have taken root in New York City, Miami, and some other cities in the United States.
Syncretic African spirit cults have also developed in Islamic contexts, including sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and to some extent in the Middle East, where they have been carried by African slaves or immigrants. Examples include the bori cult among the Hausa in Nigeria and Niger, the zar cult in Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Egypt, the holle cult of the Song-hay/Zarma in Niger, the sheitani or pepo cult among the Swahili of the East African coast, and certain Islamic brotherhoods (tariqa) like the Hamadsha in Morocco. Often these cults do not have distinct boundaries but merge with one another. They are not mere pre-Islamic survivals but represent a creative synthesis with Islamic and Middle Eastern concepts concerning spirits, saints, and religious ritual, as well as with the trance practices of the Islamic Sufi brotherhoods. Orthodox Islam is often hostile to spirit cults. Muslim authorities usually believe that spirits exist (since they are mentioned in the Qur’an) and that they can possess people, but maintain that these spirits must be exorcised rather than bargained with or cultivated. Hence, unlike the situation in the Caribbean or Latin America, only a minority of the people, or certain segments of the population, belong to such cults, although many others make use of the services of practitioners as mediums and healers.
There are a number of common elements that can be found in these African-inspired possession cults. Spirits are called by drumming, dancing, special songs, and sometimes certain incenses or libations. Each type of spirit has its own distinctive rhythm and dance style. Often it also has distinctive colors, attire, and other insignia. Spirits require offerings of their appropriate foods and beverages as well as the blood of animal sacrifice. In the Americas, African gods or spirits are often integrated with Catholic saints; for example, the Haitian Voudou god Ogun is also seen as Saint Peter. In North Africa, possessive spirit cults are sometimes integrated with Islamic saint cults. Whereas this is not often true in other Islamic
African areas, certain types of possessive spirits are equated with Islamic spirit categories and viewed as devout Muslims. Another characteristic of possessive spirits in both Africa and the New World is that they often represent certain ethnic groups or cultural areas that have played a role in the history of the society, both internally and externally. In Haitian Voudou, spirits belong to different nations that reflect ethnic groups or regional areas in Africa, for example, Igbo, Kongo, Wangol (Angola); in Brazilian Candomble there are spirit groups that are Old Indians and Black Slaves; and in Africa there are often various spirits of foreign ethnicity, including Europeans.
Personal case histories and treatments also follow common patterns. Generally a person can acquire a possessive spirit in a number of ways. It may be inherited from ancestors, or it may simply like the person. Frequently spirits can also be sent by witchcraft. On the other hand a spirit sometimes attacks indiscriminately if someone passes the place where it resides. A spirit may immediately take over the person’s body as its own vehicle of expression. During these possessive episodes, the spirit is often said to “climb,” “ride,” or “sit” on the person. Thus in Haitian Voudou the possessed are called “horses of the gods,” whereas in the Swahili pepo cult and the northeast African zar, the possessed is referred to as the “chair” of the spirit. It is more usual, however, for the first signs of possession to be physical or mental illness, barrenness, bad luck, or other misfortunes. Hence these types of spirit complexes are often called “cults of affliction.”
The patient is usually sent to a medium or diviner for diagnosis. If spirit possession is diagnosed, the patient is sent to a specialist for treatment, who may recommend exorcism or appeasement. These two opposite types of treatment, however, are sometimes accomplished in very similar ways, with the spirit being enticed to speak through the patient or the attending spirit medium and say what it wants in terms of an offering of food, drink, and other desired items (e.g., flowers, incense), sacrifice, dress, or ceremonial or musical performance. If a permanent relationship is envisioned, these desires should continue to be met periodically. In such cases, the relationship between the spirit and its human associate is basically contractual and is often envisioned as a marriage. If such a spirit is one that normally
interacts with its human associates through possession trance, it will also usually ask for initiation into an organized spirit cult group, generally requiring an elaborate and expensive ceremony that lasts at least several days and sometimes much longer. Often possessed people are reluctant to do this because of the cost of such a ceremony as well as the ritual obligations it will bring, but will concede to the spirit’s demands once they are reminded through additional illness or other troubles that initiation is necessary for their well-being. After initiation, the spirit may want further rank within the cult, which entails the payment of fees, special ceremonies, and demonstration of competency in healing and divining. Cult members may eventually reach the stage where they head their own cult groups.
Non-African spirit possession may show both similarities and differences from these patterns. One Pacific island culture that is well known for its spirit possession practices is Bali, a small island in the Indonesian archipelago. Bali practices its own version of syncretic Hinduism. Possessive trances are very common in Balinese society and integral to its religion. Jane Belo (1969) reported that spirit trances take a wide variety of forms. There are cases like those described above where possession is signaled by physical illness, strange behavioral episodes, or altered consciousness, which, after diagnosis, lead to careers as healers and mediums. Belo listed two types of spirit mediums that follow this pattern. One type consists of shaman-like healers and diviners who use possessive trance to contact the deceased ancestors of their clients. The second type are institutionalized trance mediums for their possessive gods during temple ceremonies. As in many African-inspired spirit cults, these mediums undergo an initiation that is spoken of as marriage to the god. The gods are also called to possess them in similar ways through music, incense, and offerings; once possession occurs they are dressed in their god’s preferred attire.
In contrast to these two types of mediums, there are people who regularly undergo ceremonial possessive trance without experiencing a prior diagnostic illness or altered state. These include (1) dancers who fall into a wild possessive state because of wearing the masks of the Barong dragon and the Witch Rangda during public ritual performances; (2) followers of the
Barong dragon who also go into a wild but very prescribed trance, first attacking the witch, then falling unconscious to the ground, then being revived by the Barong and stabbing themselves in the chest with their daggers, before being carried off and revived in the temple; 3) people who occasionally go into possessive trances at temple festivals; and 4) young girls who are chosen by their villages, because of their ability to go into trance, to become possessed by the gods and dance during village rituals. Thus in Bali there is unsolicited possession that is transformed into controlled mediumship; solicited possession that is expressed as dance; and possession that, although culturally encouraged in ritual contexts, remains violent and uncontrolled, even though it follows a prescribed pattern.
Although most members of modern Western societies view spirit possession as exotic and unusual, spirit possession was not all that uncommon in the past. Possession beliefs were found in ancient Greece, the best known cases being the possession trance of the Delphic oracle at the temple of the god Apollo and the wild ecstatic behavior of the devotees of the god Dionysus. Many of the ancient peoples of the Middle East, including the Jews and early Christians, believed in possessive demons. In the New Testament, one finds both negative and positive possession, the former as illnesscausing demons that Jesus cast out, and the latter in the possession of the disciples by the Holy Spirit, which resulted in their speaking in unknown tongues. Exorcism of demons, or the Devil, continued in Christianity, especially within the Catholic tradition, where it still occasionally takes place. Possession by the Holy Spirit has often received less emphasis due to its revolutionary potential, but it has been common during certain revival periods, including the transatlantic Protestant revival of the early eighteenth century, the formation of independent Pentecostal and Holiness churches in the early twentieth century, and the more recent Pentecostal and charismatic movements. Medi-umistic possession by spirits of the dead also appears in the Spiritualist tradition, which gained a large following for a period of time in nineteenth-century United States and Europe. In France a unique form of spiritualism known as Kardecism also developed during the nineteenth century. Both the Pentecostal movement
and Kardecism have considerable influence in current Latin American religious practice (Bourguignon 1976; Taves 1999).
Western conceptions of spirit possession have often caused misunderstanding of spirit possession in other societies. The Christian emphasis on the exorcism of demons has made it difficult to understand that in many non-Western traditions possessive spirits are often not viewed as demonic and that treatment often involves appeasement or negotiation rather than exorcism. Similarly, Christians often fail to see the similarities between Christian possession by the Holy Spirit and spirit possession in other contexts, especially because it is often not the Supreme Deity who possesses but other, often intermediary, spirits. One of the most misunderstood religions in this regard is Haitian Voudou, perhaps because of its obvious syncretism with Christian Catholicism.
Nonmystical explanations of possession in Western society have also led to questionable interpretations. Possession has often been explained as psychological pathology. Possessed people were described as “mad” or “crazy,” and as the fields of psychology and psychiatry developed, those who were possessed were described as suffering from weak nervous integration, or mental problems of neurosis (quite often hysteria) or psychosis (e.g., paranoia, schizophrenia, or multiple personality disorder). Many more recent psychologists and anthropologists suggest that instead of being pathological, possession beliefs and practices may be psychotherapeutic. Moreover, many have pointed out that in cultures where possession is seen as a normal and expected occurrence, it should not be viewed as abnormal (e.g., Bourguignon 1973; Crapan-zano 1977. See Lewis 1989, chapter 7, for a useful discussion of possession and psychiatry.)
Psychological interpretations have often been combined with sociological observations about the role that possession plays in various societies and the social positions of those who usually undergo possession. Bourguignon and the Ohio State group observed from their statistical studies that possession trance was correlated with large complex societies with a high degree of social stratification and rigid social roles (Bourguignon 1973). Many others have focused on internal social correlations, pointing out that many possession cults are primarily associated with women and secondarily with
lower-class members of highly stratified societies. The explanatory theories offered for these latter associations tend to focus on one central argument: that such cults act as therapeutic outlets for psychological frustrations and socioreligious exclusion suffered by marginal members of the society (e.g., Kennedy 1967; Crapanzano 1973).
One of the most influential elaborations of this argument is Ioan M. Lewis’s theory of peripheral possession, expressed in his Ecstatic Religions, originally published in 1971, which proposes that persons in “peripheral situations” (women in male-dominated societies and other subordinate groups) are afflicted by “peripheral spirits,” which are not central to the maintenance of the society’s morality system and are, in fact, often of extraneous origin. Lewis suggested that such spirits are used as “oblique strategies of attack” in order to command attention, redress grievances and exact concessions from superiors (Lewis 1989, 26—27 and 105). In contrast to peripheral possession, Lewis posited “central possession religions” where “men of substance compete for positions of power and authority in society at large” through possession by spirits which directly sustain public morality (28). Lewis pointed out that, like peripheral possession, central possession arises in response to acute societal pressures, but that here such pressures affect the society at large in the form of harsh environmental or external political constraints (30).
Many subsequent studies of possession have continued to rely on Lewis’s model, but others have challenged his characterization of peripheral possession cults by arguing that they involve more intrasexual than intersexual competition, provide a legitimate avenue of power and authority, are not vindictive weapons against the more powerful, and are not amoral or even peripheral (e.g., Wilson 1967; Bour-guignon 1976; Crapanzano 1977).
More recently, scholars have pointed out that although possession may serve the functions that Lewis and others have noted for certain individuals or subgroups in certain circumstances, possession cannot be explained adequately in functional analyses that do not also address spirit possession as a symbolic system that conveys meaning. A number of scholars have stressed possessive events as communicative texts and applied various techniques of tex
tual and semiotic analysis. Many have also stressed that the idiom of these texts, possession, is culturally constructed, and adopts the model elaborated by Clifford Geertz (1972) of the cultural text, as stories that the society tells itself about itself.
Since the language of possession is highly symbolic, it can convey many different levels of meaning and personal interpretation. Moreover, it can reflect unavowed aspects of society that could not be expressed through other means, and expresses them in powerful metaphorical dramas, enacted in human form but attributed to the spirits. Some scholars have noted that those possessed often occupy a position in society that makes them culturally appropriate to play this role, to become mediums for the expression of the unexpressed. Hence spirit possession can be seen as a positive social role rather than an indication of social deprivation, and possession itself can be seen as “an integral part of the whole culture” (Lambek 1981, 83).
Various studies have proposed certain core messages that are expressed through possession in specific societies, often pertaining to societal, cultural, or cosmic contradictions. Others see the messages as more diverse, expressing many different aspects of cultural identity as well as historical consciousness, where different spirits represent the various internal and foreign influences that have impacted the society and the wider world connected with it (see, e.g., Giles 1999). Some recent scholars have thus viewed possession as “a form of knowledge” as well as “a way of knowing” through embodiment (Boddy 1994, 424). The possessed person not only knows the spirit world, but also the knowledge encoded through it, by embodying spirits.
A number of studies have examined how possession relates to modernity and the new global society. Far from disappearing, possession seems to be increasing, serving as a means of interpreting and sometimes contesting sociocultural change and globalization (Behrend and Luig 1999). Another recent line of inquiry concerns how the self is perceived, how it is viewed as an agent of action, and once again, how this relates to the body. In possession, neither the body nor the self are self-contained, and the self as acting subject (possessing spirit) is also divorced from the self as object (person possessed), hence pre
senting a very different model from that usually found in modern Western culture.
Linda L. Giles
See also: Afro-Brazilian Shamanism;
Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Shamans; Demonic Possession and Exorcism; Hausa Shamanistic Practices; New Orleans Voudou; Santerfa; Spirit Possession in Rajasthan;
Sufism and Shamanism; Swahili Healers and Spirit Cult; Trance Dance; Trance, Shamanic; Zarma Spirit Mediums; Zulu Shamanism
References and further reading:
Beattie, John, and John Middleton, eds. 1969.
Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa. New York: Africana Publishing.
Behrend, Heike, and Ute Luig. 1999. Spirit Possession, Modernity, and Power in Africa.
Madison and Oxford: University of Wisconsin Press and James Currey.
Belo, Jane. 1969. Trance in Bali. New York: Columbia University Press.
Boddy, Janice. 1989. Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women and Men in the Zar Cult in Northern Sudan. Madison: University of Madison Press.
————. 1994. “Spirit Possession Revisited: Beyond Instrumentality.” Annual Review of Anthropology (1994) 23: 407—434.
Bourguignon, Erika, ed. 1973. Religion, Altered States of Consciousness and Social Change.
Columbus: Ohio State University.
———. 1976. Possession. San Francisco: Chandler and Sharp.
Brown, Karen. 1987. “Voodoo.” Pp. 296—301 in Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 15. Edited by Mircea Eliade. New York: Macmillan.
Reprinted in Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion. 4th ed. Edited by Arthur Lehma