The Teachings of Jesus Please visit
http://www.jesusandmary.info
Buddhism please visit http://buddhistuniversal.org
Shamanism Spirituality by Walter L.
Williams
I think a strong sense of helping others is one of the things that I most noted
in my times when I was living in American Indian communities. It is such
a contrast to our modern American individualized way of looking at things,
where each person strives to increase their own individual wealth at the
expense of others. Even today, traditionalist Indians
have a much stronger group orientation. I think this is a
continuing heritage of being descended from a band-level culture
In such a culture, people are much more equal than in
state-level societies. But this does not mean that people in band
cultures do not try to gain status. Just like people in other societies,
band-level peoples want to have prestige and to be thought of highly by
others. The difference is that in band-level societies, the main way to
gain status is for a person to put the welfare of the group ahead of their own
individual self-interest. The extent to which they AVOID promoting their
own self-interest is the extent to which they are held in high esteem by
others.
Although people in band level societies operate pretty much equally, there is
one type of person who stands out and has the highest prestige in the group.
That person is the SHAMAN. This is a Siberian/Manchu word, derived from
the word SHAM meaning “to possess knowledge”
and AM meaning “the one who”
That is, it means “the one who possesses knowledge”
Many people think that it is SHA – MAN, implying that it denotes a man.
However, Shamans could be either men or women (the plural is not “shamen” but “shamans”)
In band-level cultures around the world, shamans filled 4 functions:
We have to ask, why these four particular functions are combined.
In order to answer that question, I need to tell you something about
shamanistic religion, which is the world’s oldest form of religion. There
are remarkable similarities among shamans in various parts of the world,
including intensive studies that have been done by anthropologists working with
band-level societies like the San !Kung in South Africa (who have one of the
world’s oldest continuing cultures), the Australian aboriginal people, the
Central Asians (see Gary Seaman book, “Ancient Traditions: Shamanism in Central
Asia and the Americas”Univ. Press of Colorado, 1994),
the Saami (“Lapps” of northern Scandanavia
Lapland), and Siberians, as well as numerous Native American groups.
According to the shamanistic worldview, everything that exists comes from the
spirit world. Everything that exists has a spirit. I have a spirit,
you have a spirit, all humans and animals and plants have a spirit, every rock,
river and cloud has a spirit. This blackboard has a spirit. The desk you
are sitting in, the clothes you are wearing, and the paper on which you are
writing each has a spirit. Every spirit is alive, is imbued with a soul,
and is animate (this is why some anthropologists call this form of religion
“animism”).
So take a moment to express gratitude to your desk for allowing you to sit
comfortably, and your paper and pen for helping you to remember this lecture so
you can pass the midterm.
Furthermore, not only are all spirits that exist animate,
but they are also of equal spiritual importance. We humans have to remind
ourselves to be humble, and not to self-centeredly think our spirit to be any
more important than other human beings; or not to deceive ourselves by assuming
that humans are any more important than the animals and plants and rivers and
mountains and all the other wonderful things that make up the universe.
According to the shamanistic view, everything that exists is connected, and
tied together in a cosmic whole that allows us to live, as a part of the
ecosystem and the universe. The shaman is the one who knows this, who
sees these connections in a way that the average person does not comprehend.
The very close similarities between shamanistic beliefs and practices among
Siberians and American Indians is further evidence that the ancestors of Native Americans migrated from
Another example, in Siberian shamanistic religions the eagle is considered extremely important. For example, the creation story of the Buryat of Siberia say
that when diseases appeared among humans, the spirits sent an eagle to help
people get well. But the eagle could not speak the language of the
humans, and so to solve this problem the eagle had sex with a Buryat woman. From this union the first shaman was
born. The symbol for a shaman is the eagle (see Mircea Eliade, book “Shamanism:
Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy”
Likewise, among American Indians the eagle is so highly respected that even a
feather of an eagle is considered to hold great spiritual power.
Plains Indian headdresses are typically made of eagle feathers.
In 199_ in a Native American gathering that I attended in
[ ***** WW bring in eagle feather to
show class***]
[*** WW wear blue beaded necktie with eagle symbol. made
by Cherokees as a birthday gift for WW ]
A third example of the similarities of Siberian and Native American shamanism
is the way a person becomes a shaman. Among both Siberians and Native
Americans, since everything that exists comes from the spirit world, it is a
common belief that for a person who is different from the average person, the
spirits must have paid particular attention in making that person different and
unique. And so, instead of being threatened by individuals who are
different from the norm, in most Siberian and Native American cultures unique
individuals are highly respected, and considered twice as spiritual as the
average person. Uniqueness is prized, and instead of being condemned as
“sinful” or “abnormal,” difference is looked up to as “exceptional.”
Another way that a person becomes a shaman, both in Siberia and in the
The fact that these shamanistic beliefs are shared by both Siberians and Native
Americans also proves how ancient shamanistic religion is. If the
ancestors of Native Americans left
A person became a shaman essentially by their own choice. A particularly
introspective youngster, especially one who becomes interested in the
ceremonies and in healing, would gravitate toward learning from an older
shaman. The elder shaman taught the younger shaman, one on one. But
the younster might come up with their
own teachings, from their experience in a trance.
SHAMANISTIC TRANCE
Both Siberian and Native American cultures shared the idea that a shaman gained
knowledge from the spirit world. For example, in Joan Halifax book,
“Shamanic Voices: A Survey of Visionary Narratives” (Dutton 1979, p.37), she
reports a Samoyed shaman from
This idea, that the shaman learns knowledge during a trip to the spirit world
that is overseen by a guardian spirit, is extremely common among both Siberians
and Native Americans. Another commonality is the idea that a shaman can
receive knowledge by going into a trance. Entering the trance involves
the shaman going into a state of meditation, where after a period of meditation
lasting maybe twenty minutes up to several hours, the shaman is suddenly struck
by the force of the spirits. The shaman may be transformed into different
animals, or experience some other kind of transformation, and this spiritual
transformation allows the shaman to ask questions of the other spirits.
Through communication with the other spirits, the shaman would be able to
determine the answers to the questions sought.
[ref. John Grim, book “The Shaman: Patterns of
Siberian and Ojibway Healing” (Univ. of Oklahoma
Press 1983) ]
SHAMAN AS HEALER
The shaman is the one who possesses the knowledge of ceremonies,
that were passed down to her or him by an older shaman from a previous
generation. The shaman takes advantage of this inherited knowledge and
this exceptional insight, in order to perform the rituals and ceremonies that
will placate the spirits. It is important to keep the spirits placated,
because if you do not, then they will be offended and may cause you great
harm.
Band-level peoples believe that illnesses or disasters are caused because the
spirits have been offended. It is therefore very important for the shaman
to do the correct rituals in order to bring about health and success. The
shaman is the person who stands between the world of the spirit and the world
of the flesh, to intercede on behalf of the group. The shaman blurs the
distinction between the secular world and the spiritual world, the shaman moves
back and forth and is the intermediary between people and spirits. Group
welfare is the prime responsibility of the shaman, and that is why an effective
shaman has such high prestige.
Because illnesses are believed to be caused by a violation of the spirits,
curing is tied in closely with religion. This is why shamans are both
religious leaders and medical doctors. Shamans not only have the
knowledge to do the healing ceremonies correctly, but they are also skilled in
the medicinal uses of plants. In fact, many of the medicines that we use
today were originally discovered by Native American shamans. In recent
years, medical anthropologists working with native South American shamans in
the Amazon rainforest have brought a number of valuable new medicines to
light. These medicines are made from plants growing wild in the jungle, that Western scientists did not previously know
about.
I remember one time when I was living on the Cherokee reservation,
I had to give a speech. But when I woke up that morning I had a terrible
sore throat and could hardly speak. A Cherokee shaman told me to wait a
minute, while he went out into the woods. When he returned, he held a
twig from a particular kind of bush. He told me to chew on this
twig. When I chewed it, I could feel immediate relief. Within a few
minutes my voice had returned to normal. I have never seen a medicine
have such a quick effect, and ever since then I have had a great respect for a
shaman’s knowledge.
SHAMANS AS HEALERS OF MENTAL ILLNESS
Native American shamans emphasized that curing was not only needed for
physical ailments and injuries, but also for mental ailments. So, in
their role as healer the shamans also served as therapists and
psychiatrists. They might prescribe mind-altering substances that would
affect a person’s mood, helping them to deal with the stresses and problems of
life. But more importantly, curing ceremonies done by the shaman had a
significant psychological aspect that helped the person get well mentally.
I remember one time when I was living on the Pine Ridge Sioux reservation in
In this case, the ceremony was being held for an old Lakota woman
The ceremony involved very intricate actions by the shaman.
He did this, then he did that, then he did something else. Each of his
actions was done to help promote the healing of this old woman. Then he
had each of us present in the room to say a prayer calling for the spirits to
help this woman. Then we all closed our eyes and prayed for the spirit of
an owl to enter the room and bestow its blessings on the old woman and indeed
on all of us.
Now, some people might look on this as a silly superstition, but let me tell
you that the intensity of the shaman’s ceremonies, as well as the verbalized
prayers of every person in the room, entered into that old woman and made her
feel much better. Even if she was not physically cured, she saw the love
and concern that everyone was doing in her behalf.
In Western medicine, it is only recently that studies have proved the strong
psychological element in healing. When people feel that others care for
them, and are wishing them to get well, they are more likely to respond in a
positive manner. The support of others helps them to be strong and fight
off the illness. This is precisely the wisdom that the shamans possessed,
from ancient times. Dismissing their rituals and ceremonies as
superstitious ignores much evidence that such psychological healing is very
important.
Furthermore, shamanistic ceremonies can serve an important social
function. If someone is ill, it might be because they or a relative
violated the rules of the hunt, or acted in an anti-social way. The worse
things that somebody could do would be to act with jealousy or miserly
selfishness.
Being ungenerous is considered as the most serious fault. Traditionalist
Indians even today want to be considered generous by others. Generosity
is extremely highly valued, and those who show their generosity by being
helpful to others are the ones who gain the greatest respect and have the
highest status in society.
This is why the shamans are the most prestigious persons in band-level
societies, because they are the ones who devote themselves most unselfishly to
helping others and the group as a whole.
The role of the shaman is to connect people to the spiritual essence of the
universe, to this great reality in which nothing exists in isolation but
everything is interrelated and connected. Most people, operating in the
logical world of the five senses, cannot see this larger reality. Shamans
try to go beyond the limits of the logical world, to open themselves to
alternate views of reality. Many children do this when they have
imaginary friends. Most adults dismiss this as a silly thought process by
a young child. But the shamanistic view would say that these innocent
children have not yet had their perceptions blunted by the dictates of logic,
and they are able to perceive an alternate reality.
Shamans try to do this by getting into an altered state of consciousness, by
developing their ability to reach ecstacy, so that
they can gain access to a deeper reality than the logical world. Real
wisdom occurs when one finally gives up on trying to explain
events in terms of what we have grown up to think of as “logic” and “reality.”
The shamanistic view says that the world is not to be explained by logic or
rationality, but is better understood by appreciating the power of ”magic.”
Now, when I say magic, I do not mean pulling a rabbit out of a hat, or card
tricks. Magic, in the Native American sense, means
“that which we do not understand.”
Shamanistic religion does not put its emphasis on “God,” but on the mystery of
life. For example, the Lakota word “Wakan Tanka” is often translated into English by the word, “God”
but I don’t think this is accurate. A literal translation of “Wakan” means “mystery” and Tanka means “the greatest.”
Therefore, Wakan Tanka
means “the greatest mystery,” or “that which we cannot comprehend.”
Unlike many other religions that have strict dogmas which cannot be challenged,
even if scientific investigations show them to be false, shamanism does not see
a conflict between science and religion.
Shamanism acknowledges that scientific discoveries can indeed explain certain
things that were not understandable before. As science learns more, that
does somewhat decrease the great mystery, and that is all to the good.
But, the shamanistic view holds, science (or rationality) cannot explain many
important things, so there is still much much more
that remains a mystery. We should not worry about this lack of
understanding, but just relax and accept that we humans are limited in our
insight and understanding. Don’t take ourselves too seriously, or think
that we are better than other beings.
If we do not have too high an opinion of humanity, we will not be so disturbed
when we find people acting vindictive or petty or cruel. We just accept
the fact that humans are limited, and often act for irrational reasons.
Having this perspective has helped me a lot in dealing with people over the
years.
The shaman is the person who can help us connect with the Great Mystery.
A shaman may have a strong sense of intuition, which is seen as an “inner
voice” from the spirits. The shaman may go into a death-like coma, to
bring knowledge back from the world of the dead, or may receive information by
dreaming. Dreams are seen as very important messages from the spirits,
not to be ignored. Dreams were never considered to be important in
Western thought, until what person? Sigmund Freud “interpretation of
dreams”
The object of spiritual ceremony is to get beyond the logical, rational,
world. This can be done by meditation, by chanting mantras, by fasting,
by taking hallucinogenic drugs, by self-torture, or by sensory deprivation.
For example, when I was living on the Pine Ridge Sioux reservation in
Before I crawled inside, the shaman did a blessing chant. I was really
thinking I was going to be totally bored sitting naked in a dark tent for a
day, so before I crawled inside I asked him “What should I think about, while
I’m inside.” The shaman said, “Don’t think. Just pray for spiritual
guidance.”
I don’t know quite what happened during that day. But not once did I feel
bored or hungry or thirsty or sleepy or restless. I didn’t even have to
go to the bathroom. I just felt totally relaxed and going deep inside
myself.
It is something I cannot logically describe in words, but the time passed so
fast that when the shaman came back to get me late into the night, I was
resentful that my vision quest had ended.
I think one reason I liked it so much is that, before that ceremony, I had
always been busy, and had a strong consciousness of not wasting time.
In this vision quest, I was literally doing nothing for the whole day.
I was not accomplishing one thing in a rational, logical sense.
Yet, I consider this to be one of the greatest experiences of my entire life,
something I will always treasure, even though I cannot really describe to you
in words why it so affected me. What I have seen in myself since that
event is a different orientation toward time. Since then I am much more
likely to take time off from productive busyness, to sit and appreciate nature,
or beauty, or just to go beyond rational thought and try to get deeper into
that alternate reality. But this does not really convey the major part of
the impact of that experience on me. I really cannot describe it.
The shaman later told me that when I was inside the tent, he and some other
Lakota people were praying and singing for me to gain spiritual insight.
While I was in the tent, he told me, an eagle circled over the tent for a long
time. He said he had never seen an eagle do that with a white man, and
said it denoted some spiritual potential in me.
DANCE IN SHAMANISM
Another way to gain spiritual insight is through dance and music. Many
Native American ceremonies involve dancing. Anthropologists have found
that there are very few things which appear in all cultures of the world.
But one of those few things, which has been observed
in every single culture that anthropologists have studied, is music and
dance. In occupation sites of early humans, archeologists have found
flutes and other evidence of music, and ancient rock art has shown human
figures posing in what looks like dance moves. There is no logical reason
why music and dance should be so important.
The question is, why is something that seems so
useless, so universal?
This was one of those great mysteries that I never understood. I knew
that I myself enjoyed music and dance, but I never logically understood it.
I also never understood why so many cultures have the dancers wear masks while
performing the dance.
I think I gained some insight into this phenomenon when I was living in
One night I was in attendance at a Reyog practice,
and I was taking photos of the dancers. The main character in Reyog dance is the Tiger King. The dancer that
performs this role has to hold a heavy wood tiger mask (with a stuffed peacock
on top of his head), holding this heavy mask by a wood insert that he clinches
in his teeth. After this practice had gone on a long time, the Warok (or spiritual person) who was directing the dance practice, suddenly grabbed my camera out of my hands and
dragged me onto the dance floor. He took the Tiger mask off the dancer
and put it over my head, forcing me to grasp the wood insert with my
teeth. Then the music started up, and everybody whooped and clapped as
they encouraged me to dance.
I did not really know the steps to the dance of the Tiger King, but I started
doing some American Indian dance steps that I had learned while living at the
Pine Ridge Sioux reservation. The Ponorogans
went crazy over this, snapping photos of me dancing with the other
dancers.
At first, I thought my dancing was just for fun, though I could not laugh
because I was holding the heavy wood Tiger mask with my clinched teeth.
But as I continued dancing, something very strange happened to me. As I
moved around dancing in the dark night, the light of the fire and several
torches punctuated the darkness, and the movement of the other dancers broke up
my view even moreso.
As I peered out of the little long and narrow slits of the eyeholes in the
Tiger mask, my head and body movements allowed me to see only small parts of
the scene. But as the mesmerizing music built in intensity, and I got
more and more into the dance, it was like something flipped in my brain.
No longer was I peering through narrow slits into the physical scene, but I
felt as if I was going beyond the surface world to peer into a deeper
reality. The flashes of light and darkness, the swirling movement of the
other dancers, now merged into a colorful reality that took me far beyond the
dance floor of that small village in east Java.
It felt like a hallucinogenic experience, but without any drugs. The
dance experience itself, and the different view of movement from behind the
mask, had transported me into another, somehow more real, reality.
After this experience, I think I began to understand why dancers in so many
cultures wear masks. The mask is not primarily for the viewing of the
audience, but for assisting the dancer in moving beyond the limits of the
rational world into the spiritual world beyond. I really felt like this
was a spiritual experience.
I think modern religion has forgotten the spiritual significance of
dance. Today, dance is relegated either to simple entertainment, devoid
of religion, or it is done only with a potential sexual partner in a sexualized
coupling.
There’s nothing wrong with that, but it is limited if we ignore a major purpose
of dance in human history. Even the masked balls of early modern
SHAMANISM (cont)
Whether by dancing, or by fasting, by taking hallucinogenic drugs, by
self-torture, or by sensory deprivation, the object of ceremony in shamanistic
religion is to flip out the brain so that the person can reach beyond the
limits of the here and now. The idea is to break free of the limits of
the logical world. Then, one can begin to see the real essence of things,
which is spiritual.
This idea of Native American religions is in some ways very similar to
“The Myth of the Cave,” written by Plato in ancient
How many of you have read this Myth of the Cave?
If so, help me describe it.
Plato wrote a story about a man who had been imprisoned in a cave since he was
a small child, and over the years this man had forgotten all his memories of
life outside the cave.
_________________________________________________________
O
]
/l\
]
________________________fire_____/ \______
] sha-
]
dow
] O ]
] /l\
]
] / \
]
]______
___________]
When the people who had imprisoned him, and kept him chained so that he could
not see the realities, but as they threw down food for him to eat, and as they
moved about in the cave, the only thing the imprisoned man could see were the
shadows from the people moving in front of the fire.
The prisoner’s senses, the things that he actually viewed with his own eyes,
were the shadows. So, from his perspective, this was the true reality to
him.
Plato suggested that most people are like the man in the cave, seeing only the
surface things that are in reality only a pale shadow of the true reality.
The surface things that we see with our eyes are limited, only a partial
reflection of another level that we cannot see. T
Plato said that the more important reality, beyond the surface, was what he
called “The Ideal.” This “ideal,” in my opinion, is very similar to
Native American shamans’ views of the need to look inside, to the spiritual essence.
SHAMANISM (cont)
As we shall see later in the semester, since the coming of the Spanish to Latin
America, and the English to
Interestingly, both the Euro-American Christians and the Communists in the
In a very similar fashion, from the late 1800s until the 1930s
Yet, despite these intensive campaigns against their native peoples’ shamanism,
by both the American and the Soviet governments, shamanism has survived and is
growing today both in
“When the white people came, they took or destroyed every physical thing that
we Indians had. They took our land, our physical possessions, our physical life of freedom. They even took our
independent thought, when they forced our children to attend Christian churches
and missionary schools. The white people took the world of the here and
now, of rational reality. But when Indians hold onto
their spirituality, then the whites cannot take the separate reality of the supernatural
world.
“We shamans have found ourselves holding onto the only thing left uncontested,
the supernatural world. There, the white man has never ventured. In
fact, he does not even have the idea that it exists.”
In other words, what this shaman was saying is that whites are limited to the
rational, and do not appreciate the extra-rational. A student once asked
me what the most important lesson I have learned from living with the
Indians. I thought about it & said, “Learning to appreciate how much
we humans do NOT understand.” Many academics are “post-modern,” I am
“post-rational”