Shamanism is one of the oldest religions in the world that persists to this day. But what is a Shaman and what shamanistic rituals are still.
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Among the Buryat, the shaman performs libations after birth to keep the infant from crying and to help it develop more quickly. Among the Nanai, when death occurs the shaman is necessary to catch the soul of the deceased floating in the universe and to escort it to the Yonder World. Illness is believed to be caused by the spirits, who must be appeased for a cure to be effected. Among the Khanty of northern Siberia, the shaman decides how many reindeer should be sacrificed to appease the spirit who causes an illness.
The shaman may fulfill his obligations either by communicating with the spirits at will or through trance.
What is Shamanism?
The latter has two forms: In the former the possessed gets into an intense mental state and shows superhuman strength and knowledge: The soul of the shaman, it is believed, then leaves his body and seeks one of the world strata. After awakening, he relates his experiences, where he wandered, and with whom he spoke. There are also cases in which possession and wandering combine, as when the spirit first enters the shaman and then leads his soul to the world of supernatural beings.
A shaman wears regalia, some part of which usually imitates an animal—most often a deer, a bird, or a bear. It may include a headdress made of antlers or a band into which feathers of birds have been pierced. The clothing of the shamans among the Tofalar Karagasy , Soyet, and Darhat are decorated with representations of human bones—ribs, arm, and finger bones. The shamans of the Goldi-Ude tribe perform the ceremony in a singular shirt and in a front and back apron on which there are representations of snakes, lizards, frogs, and other animals.
An important device of the shaman is the drum , which always has only one membrane. It is usually oval but sometimes round. The outer side of the membrane, and the inside as well among some peoples, is decorated with drawings; e. The handle is usually in the shape of a cross, but sometimes there is only one handle. The drumstick is made of wood or horn, and the beating surface is covered with fur. In some cases the drumstick is decorated with human and animal figures, and rattling rings often hang down from it. During the trance brought on by the sound of the drum, the spirits move to the shaman—into him or into the drum—or the soul of the shaman travels to the realm of the spirits.
In the latter case the shaman makes the journey on the drum as if riding on an animal, the drumstick being his lash. Sometimes the shaman makes the journey on a river and the drum is his boat, the drumstick his oar. All this is revealed in the shaman song. Among some people, the shaman wears a metal disk known as a shaman-mirror. Shamanic symbolism is presented through dramatic enactment and dance. The shaman, garbed in regalia, lifts his voice in song to the spirits. This song is improvised but contains certain obligatory images and similes , dialogue , and refrains.
The performance always takes place in the evening.
Classic shamanism
The theatre is a conical tent or a yurt ; the stage is the space around the fire where the spirits are invoked. The audience consists of the invited members of the clan, awaiting the spirits in awe.
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All these effects help those present to visualize everything that the recited action of the shaman narrates. The shaman is simultaneously an actor, dancer, singer , and, indeed, a whole orchestra. This restless figure is a fascinating sight, with his cloak floating in the light of a fire in which anything might be imagined.
The ribbons of his regalia flit around him, his round mirror reflects the flames, and his accoutrements jingle. The sound of his drum excites not only the shaman but also his audience. An integral characteristic of this drama is that those who are present are not mere objective spectators but rather faithful believers, and their belief enables the shaman to achieve results, as in healing physical or mental illnesses.
Among some people—the Altai Kizhi, for instance—a tall tree is set into the smoke opening at the top of the tent, symbolizing the Tree of the World. The shaman ascends the tree to the height of the Upper World, which is announced to his audience through the text of his song. Traces of shamanism may be found among peoples who have been converted to other religions, as in the Finno-Ugric peoples who became Christians see Finno-Ugric religion , Turkic peoples in Central Asia and Asia Minor who became Muslim, and Mongols who became Buddhists. Among groups that have converted to Christianity , Islam , or another world religion, former shamanistic practices may be revealed through an analysis of folklore and folk beliefs.
An example of such a case is the discovery of shamanism in early Hungarian cultures. In contrast, shamanism was excluded among the Khalkha-Mongolian and eastern Buryat , who became Buddhists, and among the Kazakh and Kyrgyz who adopted Islam, and it was greatly changed and developed into an atypical form by the Manchurians. In northern Asia shamanism appears in various forms.
In the most northern parts, among the Chukchi , Koryak , and Itelmen , the shaman does not exist as a member of a special profession; instead, the role is fulfilled by a suitable member of the family—often an old woman. Elsewhere, many shamans are transgender persons who have adopted feminine if male or masculine if female clothing and behaviour. Among the Yukaghir of Arctic Siberia, shamanism is part of the cult of the clan ; so also among pockets in the Ob-Ugrian peoples and among all three Altaic peoples: Turkic , Mongol , and Manchu-Tungus.
These groups all rely on professional shamans. Certain scholars have investigated ecstatic actions that may be adjudged outside the area of shamanism in the strictest sense. Tokarev studied them in Africa. Some scholars suppose that the phenomena of shamanism spread to the two American continents when the first settlers migrated from Asia.
Those who oppose this broad usage of the term shamanism argue that an apparent structural similarity among phenomena in widely separated areas does not justify an assertion of a common source or that typological similarity must be distinguished from a genetic connection. For them, shamanism may be attributed only to a precise pattern of cultural phenomena in a specific, well-defined territory, one that forms a concrete, systematic whole, such as the religious systems of the peoples mentioned at the beginning of this section.
Although the classic model and most complete expression of shamanism is found in the Arctic and Central Asian regions, the phenomenon must not be considered as limited to those countries. It is encountered, for example, in Southeast Asia, Oceania , and among many American aboriginal tribes, although it does not play a role of the first order in Africa except among those few groups that have remained hunters and gatherers, such as the San.
A distinction is to be made, however, between the religions dominated by a shamanistic ideology and by shamanistic techniques as is the case with Siberian and Indonesian religions and those in which shamanism constitutes instead a secondary phenomenon.
Shamanism predominates in the religious life of the Inuit and Yupik Eskimo peoples. Sickness is brought on by the violation of a taboo or results from the capture of the soul by a ghost. The angakok is also a specialist in magic flight. Some are reputed to have visited the Moon; others claim to have flown around the Earth.
They also know the future, make prophecies, predict changes in the weather, and excel at magic feats. Among many American Indian peoples shamanism constitutes the most important aspect of the religious life. The shaman is characterized by supernatural power acquired as the result of a direct personal experience.
Whether this power is obtained spontaneously or after a voluntary vision quest , the future shaman has to undergo certain initiatory trials. In general, shamans in these groups utilize their power in such a way as to affect the whole society. North and South American shamans, like all their fellows, claim to control the weather, know the future, be able to expose the perpetrators of thefts, and so on.
A shaman enjoys considerable prestige and authority as a healer, as the intermediary between humans and the gods or spirits, and, in certain regions, as the guide of souls of the dead to their new abode. They also guarantee that ritual observances are properly conducted, defend the tribe against evil spirits and sorcery , point out places for fruitful hunting and fishing, increase wildlife, and ease childbirth.
South American shamans can also fill the role of sorcerer; they can, for example, become animals and drink the blood of their enemies. It is probable that a certain form of shamanism was diffused on the two American continents with the first waves of immigrants from Asia; later contacts between northern Asia and North America made Asian influence possible well after the penetration of the first immigrants. Shamanism is prevalent in the Malay Peninsula and in Oceania. Among the peoples of the Malay Peninsula , the shaman heals with the help of celestial spirits or by using crystals of quartz.
But the influence of Indo-Malayan beliefs is noticeable, too, as when shamans are said to change into tigers or to achieve trance by dancing. In the Andaman Islands the shaman gets his power from contact with spirits. The shamans gain their reputation through their acts of healing and the quality of the weather they create through meteorological magic. Mediumistic qualities also are characteristic of different forms of shamanism in Sumatra, Borneo, and Celebes. These intersex individuals hermaphrodites are considered to be intermediaries between heaven and earth because they unite in their own person the feminine element earth and the masculine element heaven.
Possession by gods or spirits is a peculiarity of Polynesian ecstatic religion. The extreme frequency of possession in that region has made possible a proliferation of priests , inspired persons, healers, and sorcerers, any of whom may perform magical cures.
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For this reason it is not possible to speak of shamanism stricto sensu in Polynesia. Among Australian Aborigines , a person becomes a shaman through a ritual of initiatory death, followed by a resurrection to a new and superhuman condition. This initiatory death, like that of the Siberian shaman, has two specific marks not found elsewhere in combination: The revelations concerning the secret techniques of the medicine men are obtained in trance, a dream, or in the waking state before, during, or after the initiatory ritual proper.
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A society accepts that there are specialists who are able to communicate directly with the transcendent world and who are thereby also possessed of the ability to heal and to divine; such individuals, or shamans, are held to be of great use to society in dealing with the spirit world. A given shaman is usually known for certain mental characteristics, such as an intuitive, sensitive, mercurial , or eccentric personality, which may be accompanied by some physical defect, such as lameness, an extra finger or toe, or more than the normal complement of teeth.
Shamans are believed to be assisted by an active spirit-being or group thereof; they may also have a passive guardian spirit present in the form of an animal or a person of another sex—possibly as a sexual partner. The exceptional abilities and the consequent social role of the shaman are believed to result from a choice made by one or more supernatural beings. The one who is chosen—often an adolescent—may resist this calling, sometimes for years. Torture by the spirits, appearing in the form of physical or mental illness, breaks the resistance of the shaman candidate and he or she has to accept the vocation.
The initiation of the shaman, depending on the belief system, may happen on a transcendent level or on a realistic level—or sometimes on both, one after the other. While the candidate lies as if dead, in a trance state, the body is cut into pieces by the spirits of the Yonder World or is submitted to a similar trial.
After awakening, a rite of symbolic initiation, such as climbing the World Tree , is occasionally performed. By attaining a trance state at will, the shaman is believed to be able to communicate directly with the spirits. This is accomplished by allowing the soul to leave the body to enter the spirit realm or by acting as a mouthpiece for the spirit-being, somewhat like a medium.
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One of the distinguishing traits of shamanism is the combat of two shamans in the form of animals, often reindeer or horned cattle. The combat rarely has a stated purpose but is a deed the shaman is compelled to do. The outcome of the combat means well-being for the victor and destruction for the loser. In going into trance, as well as in mystical combat and healing ceremonies, the shaman uses certain objects such as a drum , drumstick, headgear, gown, metal rattler, mirror, and staff.
The specific materials and shapes of these instruments are useful for identifying the types and species of shamanism and following their development. Characteristic folklore oral and textual and shaman songs have come into being as improvisations on traditional formulas used to lure or imitate animals. For millennia they have left behind the confines of their temples and the comfort of their shrines so they can support their allies in war-torn l Dominance is their aim, and they have found a path to it in the dark arts. These voracious spellcasters summon demonic minions to fight beside them.
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