A shaman is a healer or priestly magician who ritually achieves altered stated of consciousness, in order to access the spiritual realm and channel the transcendental healing energies from that plane into this world. Shamanism is based on the belief that many gods and ancestral sprits both benign and malignant, affect the fortunes of the living and can only be swayed by medicine men or shamans who mediate with supernatural beings via incantations, dreams and visions (1). The first Chinese magicians were wu (shamans), able to communicate with ancestors and spirits, then accusations that they were involved in ku (casting harmful spells) led to their eventual downfall (2).
Shamanic techniques have been practiced for at least 20,000 years. Shamans and their descendants are the keepers of tribal tradition, working within a framework which evolved from the earliest tribal consciousness (3). To become a shaman required isolation, strict training and extreme self-discipline in fasting, praying and repetitive actions like whirling in in order to achieve a trance state during which visions occurred (4). In some cultures, people inherit the role from a relative, but most are considered to have been chosen by the spirits themselves as indicated by an unusual physical trait or a period of mental suffering (2).
Shamans are believed to be able to influence spirits and can even invite demons to possess them, in order to increase their healing powers (5). Shamans live in ordinary reality and non-ordinary reality, which is an altered state of consciousness in which they have access to planes: earth, sky and underworld which are connected by a central access (6). A shaman may be called upon to help someone who is dis-spirited, having lost their soul or their personal guardian spirit. In those cases, the shaman takes a healing journey in non-ordinary to recover the lost spirit or soul and return it to the patient (7).
- Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, vol.21.
- Blackett-Ord, R. & Fischel, A. 2020. A History of Magic Witchcraft & the Occult.
- Matthews, J. & Matthews, C. 2003. Walkers Between World.
- Luck, G. 1985. Arcana Mundi: Magic and The Occult in Greek and Roman Worlds.
- Reader’s Digest Association. 1992. Quest For the Unknown: Life Beyond Death. Pleasantville, New York.
- Guiley, R.E. 1991. Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal Experience.
- Harner, M. 1990. The Way of the Shaman.