For the past 200,000 years or so, there have been individuals in most human societies who have a special relationship with supernatural powers and who have attempted to use this relationship on behalf of their group. These first religious specialists are often called shamans.
The term “shaman” came into English from the Tungus people of Siberia. Among the Tungus, the shaman was a healer who would go into a trance to communicate with spirit helpers. While there are a few people who feel that the term “shaman” should be restricted to use with Siberian peoples, most people have generalized the term to refer to a kind of religious specialist that is found in nearly all societies. One broad description of the shaman has been provided by Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth:
“The shaman is the person, male or female, who in his late childhood or early youth has an overwhelming psychological experience that turns him totally inward. It’s a kind of schizophrenic crack-up. The whole unconsciousness opens up, and the shaman falls into it.”
The initial contact with the spirit world that makes a person a shaman is self-proclaimed. This, in itself, does not make the person a shaman: the community has to accept the individual’s spiritual contact as being real and meaningful.
In many cultures, dreams or visions are critical in determining who becomes a shaman as well as guiding the work of the shaman. It is through these dreams or visions that the shaman may enter the spirit world and communicate with certain spirits, particularly those spirits with which the shaman has a special relationship. These special spirits, often called guardian spirits, usually appear to the shaman at a relatively young age. From them the shaman is sometimes given special songs, rituals, and/or symbols which may be used in contacting them.
The differing nature of the guardian spirits in many traditional societies means that shamans may have specialties. In traditional Plains Indian societies, for example, a person whose guardian spirit was the antelope might specialize in finding the antelope herds, while someone whose guardian spirits were the plant people might be involved in certain kinds of healing involving plants.
With regard to the role of guardian spirits among the Kapauku of West New Guinea, Leonard Pospisil, in his book The Kapauku Papuans of West New Guinea, writes:
“The guardian spirits are essential for the shaman, who has no supernatural power of his own. They tell him about the proper cure in his dreams or visions, or they possess the shaman and talk through his mouth in a high-pitched voice, spitting out words like machine-gun bullets.”
In many instances, one of the important features of the shaman is the use of the trance state in making contact with the spirit world. In the trance state, the shamans report that they are able to travel into a different world, a different dimension in which they can see the causes and cures of disease, locate wild game, see the future, and other things. Archaeologist Chris Scarre, in an entry on religion in
The Oxford Companion to Archaeology writes:
“In order to communicate with the spirit world the shaman has to enter a trance, sometimes induced by narcotics or hypnotic dance, in order to experience visions or hallucinations.”
In a similar fashion, David Stern, writing in
National Geographic, reports:
“The ecstatic trance, or soul journey, as it’s sometimes called, is a signature phenomenon. But how shamans employ their instruments and spiritual insights varies greatly, as can the ritual’s ultimate purpose.”
There are many different ways in which trances can be introduced, including the use of music, dance, sensory deprivation, fasting, pain, and hallucinatory substances. Among the followers of today’s Holiness Way (a Christian religion), dance and music may bring about a trance in which the Holy Ghost enters the person’s body and they speak in tongues. In a very similar manner, participants in the Paiute Indian ceremony commonly known as Wovoka’s Ghost Dance, would fall to the ground in a trance state and experience a journey to another world.
The use of hallucinogenic substances to obtain an altered state of consciousness is common in many religions. Hallucinogenic substances distort the senses, thus creating a sense of an altered or alternative reality. Hallucinogenic substances are commonly classified as psychotominmetics (psychosis mimickers), psychotaraxics (mind disturbers), and psychedelics (mind manifesters). Nearly all hallucinogens have their origins in plants. The exception to this is the new world toad—Bufo marinus.
Shamans today are found in societies around the world and may be participants in religious traditions such as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, as well as the numerous unnamed tribal traditions.
Shamans are often involved in healing ceremonies as well as divination ceremonies. Among the hunting and gathering societies of past centuries, divinations by shamans were used to locate game herds.
Among the Indian nations of New England, the shamans, known as powwows (sometimes spelled pauwau and not to be confused with the modern gathering, also known as a powwow, which features traditional dancing), often performed divinatory rituals to determine the outcome of a battle or of a hunting expedition. With the aid of their guardian spirits, the powwows could look into the future as well as the past. They would also use the help of their guardian spirits in reading omens or signs.
Today’s urban people are less interested in finding wild game and may consult shamans about the stock market, finding love, and contacting dead ancestors.
In the hunting and gathering societies which dominated the human world until 10,000 years ago, shamans were always part-time practitioners, in that they hunted and gathered like the other members of the society. Today, shamans still tend to be part-time, usually holding down jobs in the modern world and engaging in shamanistic rituals on a part-time basis. Shamanism tends to be informal, personal, and egalitarian (there is no ranking of shamans).