Shamanism as a Religious Practice

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Discussion
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Shamanism comes from the Siberian Tungusic language sramaNah, which means religious exercise. Shamanism is a series of conventional thinking and a practice that deals with the way people communicate with the spirit of the world. Shamanism is dynamic worldwide, but shamanism has similarities in their sense of beliefs and practices such as; they believe that the spirits can be either good or evil; the shaman can have power over the benefit of the people. Also, the shamans believe that they are healers and they know how to treat illnesses. In shamanism, they believe that Animals play a significant responsibility; they act as a symbol for their Gods and serves as a prophet (ELIADE, 1950).

Shamanism is based on the principle that the evident world is surrounded by invisible forces or spirits that has something to do with the life of the living people. It is said that shamans have the ability to cause human suffering and they also got the power to cure it. They believe that they can maneuver the spirits and converse to them to tell what they want. According to a well-known critic, Shamans have been attributed with the ability to control the weather, divination, the interpretation of dreams, astral protuberance, and traveling to upper and lower worlds (HULTKRANTZ, 1979).

The anthropologists view shamanism as an archaic magico-religious happening wherein the shaman is the leader of the elation or as the critic’s term, ecstasy. Mircea Eliade defines shamanism as a way of reaching ecstasy. A Shaman may possess powers over the control of fire, wind, and other elements present in the world. If a shaman specializes in a particular subject, he is determined as a healer. The distinctive attribute of shamanism is its center of attention on a rapturous abstraction state in which the soul of the shaman is said to travel, he may either go to heaven or go underworld. The shaman has spirit helpers, whom he or she talks to and gives messages (ELIADE, 1950).

Discussion

Shamanism: as a Religion

A problem is somehow encountered in the discussion about shamanism viewed as a religion and trying to connect with the spiritual relationships between the personal beliefs of the shamans. Shamanism comes in different kinds of development and got a lot of unpreventable developments (HULTKRANTZ, 1979).

The increase and progress of shamanistic practices marked the doorstep where the person initiates to become aware of mankind’s efforts to appear at a methodical perception of the mystical world. In the itinerary of its long cultural history, shamanism endeavored to loosen the universal enigmas: the origins of the cosmos, the earth, men, animals, and plants. It endeavored to clarify the well-known disagreement: the existential quest for the meaning and the sense of life and death. Shamanism adapted the character of religious practices by developing techniques through which a selected group of individuals could attain the mysterious knowledge of the universe. The illustrations of the celestial worlds were professed by means of the different processes activated through the ritual techniques of ecstasy (HULTKRANTZ, 1979).

According to Eliade, Shamanism is an ecstatic spiritual complex of particular and fixed elements, with a particular ideology that has persisted through millennia and is set up in many diverse cultural settings. Eliade also defined shamanism as a way of connecting to sacred cosmos, or the great master of ecstasy. He celebrated the shaman as the truly religious man and interpreted the shaman’s ecstatic experiences of ascension and journey, dismemberment, and the detection with the axis Mundi as an epitome of spiritual knowledge. This noticeable idealization grounds Eliade’s famed premise of religious delegation. The premise holds that shamanism enabled members of the primordial cultures of Europe, Asia, and North America to live accustomed to the timeless, sacred order of the cosmos. With the increase of historical religions stanch to temporal change and expansion, this sacred order became more outlying and less available. In Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, Eliade even declares mythical thoughts to be a structure of avoidance. But he distorts to the dominance of historical reality overshadowed by his religious belief that the myth is the most important breadth of human thought, the elucidation to the otherwise meaningless flow of secular existence, and the transcendental dominion where unlike cultures congregate and all persons uncover their profundity as human beings (ELIADE, 1964).

A lot of criticisms were encountered by shamanism as a religion because it lacks an organization of scriptures and a religious hierarchy, in disparity to the renowned world religions. Certain claims, in some way, cannot dissociate from all the essential parts of a legitimate spiritual complex; authentic shamanism of its ritualism, spiritualism, magico-mythic elements, and eschatology. Its transcultural parameters describe the second most, continuing ritual tradition in human history. Unquestionably, firm differences in shamanistic practices can occasionally be endorsed to syncretism with other kinds of religion that exist in the same culture where shamanism was initiated. Also, many differences result from dynamic intellectual contexts and match up to those encountered among divergent peoples with religious practices of their own (ELIADE, 1964).

Shamans as Healers

A shaman is one who has been introduced into the traditional practices of the world and being into this shamanic ecstasy wherein they believe that they were powerful enough to do things under their control. One good citation is the way of healing people according to their abilities and with the possession of their Gods. The shaman acts as a bridge between the elements and the individuals who believe in their rituals and becomes a patient (RIPINSKY- NAXON, 1989).

Healing is only a partial definition or skill that a shaman may have, but this is one of the biggest topics that deal mainly with the contrasting beliefs of modern science. As to the testimonials of those who experienced shamanism, they have witnessed the effectiveness of the operations of the shamans in using plants and herbs for the curing process. Also, the people who tried shamanism cited that those who want to try shamanism have to have faith in the shaman and in the whole culture of shamanism.

Shamanism has its own way of expressing its way of healing by enacting ritually with the environment and how they encourage the patients; the shamans also say a lot of suggestions on how they could get well and what should be their expectations for the rituals that may result to a placebo effect. The healers are often called the “Doctors who reside within”, comes from the side of the positive aspects of the biochemistry and maintain the parity for the self-healing ability of the patients (RIPINSKY- NAXON, 1989).

Shamans use metaphors that can change the perception of the patients on the way they outlook their illnesses. The people under the medication of the shamans go into the convincing effects that a patient may have in mind to turn negative things into positive ones. Sickness is all in the mind, if people keep on feeling and saying that they have this particular disease is believed that it really would depict on one’s self. In this part, faith in the healing process of shamanism plays the most essential part for the positive outcome. It is believed that the negative elements that were released by the shamanic patients were transferred into the shamans. Studies about the intellectual and emotional effects of songs, chants, prayers, spells, and music, say that it helps people to respond to their illness positively (HULTKRANTZ, 1979).

Conclusion

The notion of the shaman has been extensively functional but still viewed a lot of complexities for some reasons. The fundamental issues are whether the concept of the shaman is strict, related to a particular culture; or whether shamanism constitutes a universal phenomenon, and with cross-cultural applicability and commonalities resulting from core features of human biology. The central contentions include whether shamans are specific to particular cultures or areas, whether they constitute a human collective found in all societies, or whether they are a widely disseminated phenomenon found in specific kinds of Cross-cultural investigations are crucial methods for empirically answering the questions and tracing the roots of shamanism (RIPINSKY- NAXON, 1989).

The association of different types of shamanistic healers to persistence, social and political characteristics provides the substantiation of the evolutionary alteration of hunter-gatherer shamanism into other types of religious practitioners. The basic elements of shamanism illustrate different roles depicted in the way its practitioners interpret its ideas, the shamans. As individuals specializing in the performance and the enactment of the rituals, they are also the tribal time-keepers or custodians of the calendar. In hunting magic, the shamans further promote and consolidated a vital relationship with the Master of the Animals, or an equivalent figure, as a result assuring reward for their people (RIPINSKY- NAXON, 1989).

Many of the shamanistic ceremonies worldwide are validated by myths trying to explain the creations of such rites, as well as cosmic paradigms. These myths often diminish the performance of rituals in terms of cultural acquisitiveness or social expediency. The fundamental nature of social existence is centered on mythic descriptions, which lends an existential facet to life. A coherent idea is no more an aim certainty than the myths if an idea is built. Myths satisfy the fundamental responses to the basic human need for meaning, in some way. The attempts to appreciate the worldviews and daily dramas of indigenous cultures must take into account the roles of the diverse factors exerting an impetus on the developmental progress (RIPINSKY- NAXON, 1989).

References

Eliade, M. 1950. “Shamanism” (In): V. Ferm (ed.), Forgotten Religions. New York: Philosophical Library.

Eliade, M. 1964. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Bollingen Series 76. Princeton University Press.

Hultkrantz, A. 1979. The Religions of the American Indians. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ripinsky-Naxon, M. 1989. “Hallucinogens, Shamanism, and the Cultural Process: Symbolic Archeology and Dialectics”, Anthropos 84: 219-224.

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