Shamanism

An Introduction

Margaret Stutley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134482054
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Shamanism is one of the earliest and farthest-reaching magical and religious traditions, vestiges of which still underlie the major religious faiths of the modern world. The function of the shaman is to show his or her people the unseen powers behind the mere appearances of nature, as experienced through intuition, in trance states, or during ecstatic mystical visions. Shamans possess healing powers, communicate with the dead and the world beyond, and influence the weather and movements of hunting animals. The psychological exaltation of shamanism trance states is similar to the ecstasies of Yogis, Christian mystics and dervishes. Shamanism: An Introduction traces the development of shamanism in its many fascinating global manifestations. Looking at shamanic practices from Siberia to China and beyond, it provides an accessible guide to one of the world's most ancient, notorious and frequently misrepresented spiritual traditions. Placing special emphasis on the climate, geographic and cultural pressures under which shanic customs arose and continue to be observed, Margaret Stutley summarizes and clearly explains the logic of a faith whose fantastical elements hold a special place in popular imagination.

1 Male and Female Shamans

DOI: 10.4324/9780203398166-2

Shamans have long been associated with hunter-gatherers and members of nomadic societies. Shamans advise the community when hunting is unsuccessful, or whenever crises occur in the harsh climate of extreme cold and the ever-present risk of starvation and disease. These societies are the nearest one can get to a ‘classless’, loosely stratified society.

The shaman, in common with the priest of other religions, does not bring about any social reform for he is conservative and supports the established order. For thousands of years the shaman has protected mankind's mythological knowledge. Thus he is a completely integrated part of the culture, whereas the prophet is a reformer-innovator.

The main purposes of male and female shamans are connected with divination, understanding Nature, healing the sick and, especially, preserving the psychomental equilibrium of the clan, so preventing the spread of psychic epidemics and psychosomatic illnesses. He is helped by his spirits who give him knowledge far in excess of that available to ordinary mortals. Shamans have peculiar brilliant eyes which enable them to see spirits as well as being sensitive to any change in the nearby psychic atmosphere. They uphold clan values, and bring about harmony between human beings and supernatural forces.

Some individuals may receive their calling any time between the ages of 6 and 50 but the majority are about 20 years old. Some Uzbek shamanesses received the call after marriage and after having had up to three children.

Both male and female Khanty shamans are worshipped as ancestral shamans in sacred groves where images of the ancestors are kept.

The making of a shaman

Although there are many different beliefs concerning the making of a shaman, it is usual for him or her to have a twin spirit in the shape of an animal which becomes the chief spirit or alter ego. After the novice is fully trained, the spirit returns to the middle earth where it settles on a larch tree. Henceforth, it becomes the main assistant during ritual performances. Another method is to possess an ancestral spirit which may be a generalized spirit of a certain line, or the soul of a particular shaman ancestor, or both at the same time. Shirokogoroff points out that shamans and initiates ‘practice the conscious loss of consciousness’.¹

Part of the training includes aggravating the nervous system by undergoing specific austerities, experiencing and controlling trances during which the spirit world is visited and mastering the neuro-physiological processes of one's own body. A-L. Siikala has pointed out that a person with normal nerves may achieve a state of trance, but people of greater sensitivity do find it easier.² The so called ‘shamanicillness’ which may occur at this time appears to be the result of autosuggestion and what is expected of shamans. It seems also that shamanizing usually effects a cure.

The initiate often retired to a quiet place seeking spiritual experiences, composing his or her own songs supposedly with the help of the spirits and learning the topography of the other world. During this time the spirit of an ancestor shaman appears. The initiate may feel that the spirits are destroying the old ego and body by dissecting it, after which he or she becomes a shaman, able to see things and worlds that are hidden from the uninitiated. The importance of dismemberment and the initiate's rebirth is found also in animal ceremonialism where the bones are the points of attachment for the soul. After initiation the shaman demonstrates various powers in public rites for the benefit of the community. He or she is now a psychotherapeutic healer, having undergone both mental and physical suffering and a long training that enables him or her to train others. The shaman is also a mediator between the supra-normal and normal worlds and so restores a proper balance. It is important to remember that shamans’ experiences are based on the beliefs of each individual's own culture, and what has been learned in altered states of consciousness; thus a shaman meets his spirit-helper, whereas a Christian mystic may see Jesus or the Virgin Mary.

The Chukchis believe that everything lives and therefore even apparently inanimate objects possess some kind of soul principle. For this reason the shaman's spirits may even include stones or household utensils.

The ajami spirit of the Nanai people is inherited and becomes the tutelary spirit of the initiatory period as well as providing the spirits necessary for shamanizing. This spirit wife or husband has an erotic relationship with the shaman. Similarly the transvestite shamans among the Siberian and inner Asian tribal peoples often have a spirit lover.

When the performance is dealing mainly with soul flight or with the shaman's journey to the lower world the emphasis is not so much on talking to the spirits. The trance state usually ends in loss of consciousness. Later the spirits may be called back by singing and drumming and may answer questions from the assembly.

A shaman may feel his or her vocation spontaneously, or through a long-term, painful illness, or through a vivid dream or vision or by means of meditation. It may be assisted by fasting, isolation, exhaustion, repetitive music, or by narcotics, tobacco, alcohol and so on. But merely consuming drugs without the necessary mental training, even if carried on for many years, will not lead to spirituality — a fact seen clearly in the drug culture of the Western world.

Some ethnographers consider that women were the first shamans, and that they appeared in the matriarchal period when women were far greater magicians than their male counterparts and also performed important clan functions later taken over by male shamans. This may explain the fact that a number of male shamans practise transvestism, thereby indicating the former importance of shamanesses. When a Yakut shaman approaches the Master of the Forest, he dons a woman's headdress and carries a bow. Siikala points out that transvestism when shamanizing ‘is a typical feature, also in Palaeo-Asian shamanism’.³

Another view is that a woman was the first human being to receive shamanic powers which she transmitted later to her son who became the first male shaman. Usually the wives of clan-founders are mentioned together with their husbands in clan incantations, although a number of women are invoked alone as ancestors. Often they are unmarried mothers whose sons’ births were of a miraculous nature.⁴

Some ethnographers regard shamans as unbalanced, neurotic individuals. This seems unlikely as neurotics are entirely wrapped up in themselves and have no desire to help others. In fact shamans may be innately creative, balanced and with more mental capacity than their people. They understand much of the phenomena of nature, and are ready to help their community. More especially they function as intermediaries between the people and the spirits of other worlds.

Although ventriloquism was employed to give the impression that spirits were speaking from different parts of the dwelling, shamanism consists of much more than mere conjuring tricks, for the practitioners themselves are often in deep trance states, the details of which they are unable to recall.

There is a hereditary rite to claim a shaman's function, which may be transmitted in a family equally to boys or girls. When not represented on Earth by a shaman or shamaness it becomes dangerous to its owner; therefore such a lineage tries to avoid not having a living shamanic representative.

The Chukchi shamaness S. Telpina related that she had suffered severe mental illness for three years during which time her family ensured that she did not injure herself. Yet when finally she accepted the call to become a shamaness her recovery began. Accepting the call involves accepting several spirits as protectors or helpers, thereby opening the way to communication with the whole spirit world. Sometimes the call involves hearing an ‘inner voice’ (also experienced by some Christians) or it may be triggered by some animal, plant, or other natural object which appears at the right time, but if the slightest lack of harmony occurs between the shaman and the spirits, he or she dies immediately. Paradoxically, it is also believed by Chukchis that a woman is by nature a shaman and therefore does not need any preparation for her calling. However, today it depends on personal ability irrespective of gender, although the majority of shamans among the Manchus have always been women.

A Nivkhi shamaness claimed that she could heal people but only when in an ecstatic state and with the help of living animals and birds. During the performance she held a black, undoctored dog on a leash which is called the ‘song-leash’ without which she could not see the spirits. Only the dog knew where to find the animals (embodying the spirits) that she needed to communicate with.⁵

Today shamanesses are requested to perform divination mostly in connection with healing, preventing deceit and fraud and finding lost animals and objects; occasionally they may be asked to divine for clan affairs. But the women are prohibited from ascending sacred mountains, entering a forge or stepping over hunting implements or over a male shaman's paraphernalia, because menstruation would adversely affect his utensils. It was also believed that menstrual blood prevents a person who is in a transformed state from recovering his or her normal state. (It is interesting that the Church of England and Wales required women to be ‘churched’ after giving birth. This archaic rite lasted until about the middle of the twentieth century.) Shamanesses were also prohibited from attending bloody sacrifices held in the open air. Nevertheless, two famous mythical shamanesses, Asujkhan and Khusujkhen, sacrificed a mare, a ram and a goat in order to obtain the boy Bulagat, one of the main ancestors of the Buriats.

Transvestism

In 1968, Basilov visited the village of Cavo to meet an old Uzbek transvestite shaman called Tašmat-bola (born 1886), the only son of a rich man. In his youth he was a good drummer, dancer and singer and he became a shaman and was blessed by a shamaness. He acquired a number of helping spirits (paris) who enabled him to heal people by divining which consisted of throwing a piece of cotton wool into water and watching its movements, thereby providing the required information as to the cause of the diseases and the cure. It was said that if he refused to wear women's clothes as demanded by his spirits, they would suffocate him in the night. Perhaps this indicated that his own spirits were female.

When engaged in healing serious diseases Tašmat shamanized by calling his spirits, beating his drum and crying out the names of the spirits. When they appeared he exorcized the hostile spirits causing illness, and still drumming he constantly repeated these words: ‘Go away, go away!’ Aided by his helping spirits he ‘tied’ the hostile ones saying: ‘A horned snake comes, tie! A lame pari comes, tie!’ and so on. Then a woman near the patient ties a knot on a specially prepared thread thereby ‘locking in’ the spirit and draining its strength. Sometimes a hen was killed and its blood smeared on to the patient and the bleeding hen pressed against the heart while the body remained warm, after which it was given to a dog, probably in the hope that the disease would be transferred to the animal. This was a common practice in several cultures including the ancient Vedic religion of India.

Before sham ani zing Tašmat lighted a lamp and placed in it a sorghum stalk soaked in grease at one end and with red, white and black shredded rags attached to the other end. This lamp was set up for the spirits.

Tašmat was said to cure people of the Evil Eye by stroking the afflicted person with bread, or with a bowl of ashes wrapped in a cloth.

Basilov points out that Tašmat combines in himself both witch-doctor and singer, a characteristic of ancient stages in the evolution of shamanism. He adds that partial feminization indicates the shamanic transvestism known among many peoples of North-east Asia and America. Transvestism is not only peculiar to shamanism but is ‘related to priesthood in its most diverse forms … [it] was generated by the process of transition from matriarchy to patriarchy, when priestly functions became accessible to men.⁶

Transvestism also occurs when the creator is regarded as bisexual — a notion that may lead to bisexuality being seen as a spiritually superior condition to ordinary individuals. It occurs among the Kamchadals, the Asian Inuits, and, in the past, among the Koryaks, as well as in Indonesia (Sea Dyaks) and some of the Amerindians — the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Ute and others; and in South America among the Araucanians and Patagonians.⁷

Herodotus (I. 105) referred to Scythians who had a class of diviners known as enaries ‘womanish men’, who divined by willow rods, a gift from Aphrodite who sent down to them a ‘women's disease’. (Tašmat's drum was sometimes replaced by a panicle of willow twigs). Hippocrates noted that the men spoke like women and did female chores. He considered that this defect was caused by horse riding. Similarly, through riding exercises the Pueblo Indians of the USA managed to cause the total loss of the male functions of those who had to change sex (such persons being needed for ‘religious orgies’).⁸

Androgynous male and female shamans

Some young shamans dreaded the thought of androgyny to such an extent that a number preferred suicide than meet this requirement, in spite of the fact that such individuals were highly regarded and believed to be the most powerful of all practitioners.⁹

Siikala (in Studies on Shamanism,pp. 56ff.) states that a typical feature of Palaeo-Asian shamanism is when a Scandinavian transvestite shaman, when shamanizing, approaches the Mistress of the Forest.

Some Chukchi clans had androgynous male and female shamans who had ritually and psychologically ‘changed sex’. With the aid of spirits they become attractive to the opposite sex from whom they choose their lovers, husbands or wives. Transvestite men adopt women's clothes and ways; the females are then ‘transformed’ into men, wear male attire, speak like men and learn to use weapons. They find girls who are ready to become their ‘wives’. In this case, a gastrocnemius obtained from the leg of a reindeer sometimes serves as a male organ. If children are desired a marriage will be arranged with suitable young neighbours.¹⁰

The androgynous state transcends the pairs of opposites and embraces all contraries, thus retaining perfect harmony and equilibrium. Therefore the male or female shaman is a ‘healed healer’ who, by means of a personal rite of transformation, integrates many aspects of the life experience, including body and spirit, maleness and femaleness, good and bad, the individual and the community and the past, present and future. Finally, totality is attained that previously existed when the many were the One.

Those cultures that have a male female polarity theme of an androgynous supreme being believe such a being to possess enormous universal power from which all the pairs of opposites have sprung. Such beings include the androgynous form of the ancient Egyptian god of the Nile, Hapi and Nu, god of the primeval waters from which the world was created; the male female form of Śiva Ardhanārī; the Tantric supreme being includes both male and female elements; in northern Australia the mighty god Ungud is the bisexual creator; and in the Bible (Genesis I. 27) it is written that ‘God created man in his own image … male an...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Male and Female Shamans
• 2 Trance, Ecstasy and Possession
• 3 Shamans’ Paraphernalia
• 4 Deities and Spirits
• 5 The Shaman’s Costume
• 6 Divination and Healing
• 7 Soul, Ancestor Cults and Death
• 8 Images and Idols
• 9 Were-Animals
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index