Shamanism

“ Those of the people who are believed to be able to divine most easily the wishes of the evil ones and who enjoy their favour to a certain extent are called shamans, and the religious ceremonies which they perform are shamanism. In every case the shamans must give their advice as to how the devils are to be got rid of, and must reveal the wishes of the demons.”300 As to these demons of the earth, who infest the Koryaks, we are told that “when visiting the houses to cause diseases and to kill people, they enter from under ground, through the hearth-fire, and return the same way. ”

“ Shamanism is the worship of a large number of primitive North Asiatic tribes, having no idols except a few fetishes and some rude ancestral images or representations of the spirits of the earth and air. It is a gross mixture of sorcery and sacrificial ceremonies for the propitiation of evil spirits. These malignant beings are supposed to populate the earth, the clouds, and the air, and to be the cause of most of the ills suffered by man. ”

“ Theism may absorb shamanism, and the priest throw the ægis of his authority over the sorcerer, but the natural development of the one into the other is contrary to the facts of psychology as well as to those of history. The evolution of a god out of the [pg 299] shaman's ghost may be conceivable, but no evidence for it exists. The superstitions and beliefs of shamanism linger, indeed, under a theistic religion, and the polytheism of Babylonia was no exception to the rule. ”

“ The shaman was mostly fraud, but the veneration for shamanism well illustrates the premium put upon wisdom in the evolution of the race.
3. THE SHAMANIC THEORY OF DISEASE AND DEATH Since ancient man regarded himself and his material environment as being directly responsive to the whims of the ghosts and the fancies of the spirits, it is not strange that his religion should have been so exclusively concerned with material affairs. Modern man attacks his material problems directly; he recognizes that matter is responsive to the intelligent manipulation of mind. ”

“ The control of spirits by Magic, especially by spells—or by other spirits who, in turn, are controlled by spells—is in its earlier form characteristic of Shamanism: indeed, it is the essence of Shamanism; though, of course, in many shamanistic tribes, having intercourse with peoples of different culture, other beliefs, ascribing independent or even superior power to spirits, are often found. ”

“ The characteristics of Shamanism is the existence of certain sooth-sayers or medicine-men, who profess a special art of dealing with the mischievous spirits who are supposed to produce illness and other calamities, and who invoke these spirits and ascertain the means of appeasing them, in trance produced by fantastic ceremonies and convulsive dancings. ”

“ One condition of the prevalence of Shamanism among any people, or group of peoples, seems to be the absence from among them of chieftains who have attained to any high degree of political power, and the consequent non-existence of authoritative gods. ”

“ All unnatural phenomena, and especially those of a disastrous and terrible nature, are attributed to the direct action of these evil spirits, and are considered as plain manifestations of their displeasure. It is claimed by many that the whole system of Shamanism is a gigantic imposture practised by a few cunning priests upon the easy credulity of superstitious natives. ”

“ It is probable or certain that Shamanism (or that into which it has very naturally developed) will influence all mankind, until science, by absorbing man's love of the marvellous in stupendous discoveries shall so put to shame the old thaumaturgy, or wonder-working, that the latter will seem poor and childish. ”

“ The old Shamanism gradually became transformed into a religion with a host of subordinate semi-divine beings ; but so strong a hold had it upon the mind, that the new gods were still ad dressed by their spirits. ”

“ In Siberia, we find shamanism. The shaman stands between man and the gods. These shamans are excitable persons with epileptic tendencies, or at least over-suggestible men or women who by autosuggestion and imitation can bring themselves into ecstatic convulsions. They alone know [Pg 321] from the gods the means to treat diseases and their personal influence overcomes the ailment. In early America, before the European discovery, the cure of disease belonged in the same way to the middleman between the gods and human beings. ”

“ He seems to have had a Tartar-Mongol-mongrel-Turanian origin, somewhere in Central Asia, and to have spread with his magic drum, and songs, and stinking smoke, exorcising his fiends all over the face of the earth, even as his descendant, General Booth, with his “devil-drivers” is doing at the present day. But the earliest authentic records of Shamanism are to be found in the Accadian, proto-Chaldæan and Babylon records. ”

“ Shamanism is the belief that all the events and accidents of life are caused or influenced by spirits, and as fear of suffering is in all men, but particularly the savage, the strongest moral emotion, the natural consequence is a greater fear of evil invisible beings. ”

“ The Gilyaks, like nearly all the natives of Northern Asia, are addicted to Shamanism. The shaman combines the double function of priest and doctor, ministering to the physical and spiritual being at the same time. When a man is taken sick he is supposed to be attacked by an evil spirit and the shaman is called to practice exorcism. There is a distinct spirit for every disease and he must be propitiated in a particular manner. While practicing his profession the shaman contorts his body and dances like one insane, and howls worse than a dozen Kamchadale dogs. ”

“ Ever and anon, true prophets and teachers arose to denounce and expose shamanism. Even the vanishing red man had such a prophet within the past hundred years, the Shawnee Teuskwatowa, who predicted the eclipse of the sun in 1808 and denounced the vices of the white man. ”

“ The Yakuts profess Shamanism, an idolatrous religion practised by the Finns, by the Samoiedes, by the Ostiaks, by the Burïats, by the Teleouts, by the Tunguses, and by the inhabitants of the Pacific islands. Shamanists worship a supreme being, the creator of the world, but indifferent to human actions. ”

“ These sorcerers or shamáns seem to be much respected; their words and actions are generally believed and acquiesced in by all; though the death of a patient or victim, or supposed victim, is sometimes avenged upon them by the relatives of the deceased. Shamánism is mostly hereditary; as a natural course of things the long array of apparatus, masks, dresses, and so on, is inherited by the son or grandson of the deceased conjurer. The young man must, however, prove himself worthy of his position before it becomes assured to him, by calling up and communicating with spirits. ”

“ The Shamanism, the ancient religion of the Samanæans and Gymnosophists, has been driven by the more popular Bramins from India into the northern deserts: the naked philosophers were compelled to wrap themselves in fur ”

“ Man has not really vanquished Shamanism and its spooks till he possesses the strength to lay aside not only the belief in ghosts or in spirits, but also the belief in the spirit. ”

“ Sometimes a knowledge of healing herbs was included in the Shaman's education, and often he gave advice on personal matters. But the chief business of the Shaman was to keep man reconciled with the spirit world, to persuade it to be on his side, or to prevent the spirits from doing him harm. A Shaman was not a priest, nor was he elected to office, and in some tribes he did not even go to war, but stayed at home to protect the women and children. Any one could be a Shaman who thought himself equal to it and could persuade people to believe in him. ”

“ A term more or less interchangeable with “medicine man,” “doctor,” or even “priest.” Many tribes give Shaman and priest not merely distinct, but antagonistic functions. The priest is keeper and demonstrator of rituals. The Shaman mystifies by jugglery, pretends to foretell events and control them by incantations, and by fetish-practice prevents the [297] evil spirits to whom all mishaps are attributed from working harm. Since disease is mischief done by evil spirits, Shamans treat the sick. They are the workers of “good magic,” and preside over ceremonies peculiar to their healing powers. ”

“ If it is anywhere in the neighbourhood, the shaman soon catches and replaces it in the patient's body. If it is far away, he searches the wide world till he finds it, ransacking the deep woods, the lonely steppes, and the bottom of the sea, not to be thrown off the scent even though the cunning soul runs to the sheep-walks in the hope that its footprints will be lost among the tracks of the sheep. But when the whole world has been searched in vain for the errant soul, the shaman knows that there is nothing for it but to go down to hell and seek the lost one among the spirits in prison. ”

“ The shaman is his priest and physician. He performs all the ceremonies and conducts all the dances and feasts by which the gods are propitiated and evil is averted, doing all the singing, praying, and sacrificing. By this means, and by instructing the people what to do to make it rain and secure other benefits, he maintains good terms for them with their deities, who are jealous of man and bear him ill-will. He is also on the alert to keep those under his care from sorcery, illness, and other evil that may befall them. Even when asleep he watches and works just as if his body were awake. ”

“ When a shaman declares that the soul of a sick Thompson Indian has been carried off by the dead, the good physician, who is the shaman himself, puts on a conical mask and sets off in pursuit. He now acts as if on a journey, jumping rivers and such like obstacles, searching, talking, and sometimes engaging in a tussle for the possession of the soul. ”

“ If there is a shaman present he goes all round the interior of the house, beating the drum and driving away the demons (kalau) . He searches all the people in the house, and if he finds a demon's arrow sticking in the body of one of them, he pulls it out, though naturally the arrow is invisible to common eyes. In this way he protects them against disease and death. If there is no [pg 127] shaman present, the demons may be expelled by the host or by a woman skilled in incantations.344
Annual expulsion of demons among the Iroquois and the Cherokees.. ”

“ Under such conditions the shaman is subordinate to no one in this world; nor, therefore, in the spirit-world. But where there are authoritative chiefs, authoritative gods correlative with them are approached by an order of men who are priests rather than magicians—that is to say, are regarded as dealing less in magic than in prayer and sacrifice. And this state of affairs is apt to give rise to increasing pomp and extravagance of rites, to which there is no visible limit; so that in some cases, as in Ashanti and Mexico, worship became homicide, and a sort of national insanity was established. ”

“ As the spell progresses the shaman utters the most hideous noises, 196 shouting here and there as the evil flees to another portion of the body, seeking a retreat from which the shaman shall be unable to dislodge it. After a time victory is declared; the operator claims to have the disease under his control, and although it should escape and make itself again felt in the patient, the shaman continues until the person either gets well or dies. If the former, the reputation of the shaman is increased proportionally to the payment bestowed by the afflicted one. ”

“ The wizard or witch was tortured and put to death, after which the sick Indian recovered or died, as the case might be.
Captain E. C. Merriman, of the U. S. Navy, destroyed the power of the shaman by rescuing the accused and punishing the shaman.
The shaman spends the greater part of his life in the forest, fasting and receiving inspiration from his totemic spirits. A concoction of dried frogs’ legs and sea water give him power to perceive a man’s soul—the Tlingit woman had no soul then—escaping from his [68] body and to catch it and restore it to the man. ”

“ The shaman is blindfolded, or else has a covering thrown over his head to prevent his countenance from being seen during the incantation. The patient lies on the ground before him and when the shaman is worked up to the proper state of frenzy he prostrates himself upon the afflicted person and begins to chase the evil from its seat. ”

“ The means of relief usually employed are those which the shaman (or conjurer, as he is locally known) is able to effect by working on the imagination of the sick, who is in this condition easily influenced. The will power of both the patient and shaman is stretched to its utmost tension, and as faith with them, as with many others of fairer skins, often produces more of the relief than the ministrations of drugs or drafts, the cure is effected, or else the shaman, like the physician, has not the devil on his side. ”

“ In the absence of any definite system of government, the word of a shaman has great weight: as a class they are regarded with much awe, and as a rule are obeyed much more than the chief.”​ [1270] As leader of the local branch {p358} of a secret society the most noted Maidu shaman of each district was supposed to make rain when it was needed, to ensure a good crop of edible acorns and a plentiful supply of salmon, and to drive away evil spirits, disease, and epidemics from the village. ”