- Key People:
- Vilmos Diószegi
- Related Topics:
- diviner’s sage
- wandering ecstasy
- active ecstasy
- horse-sacrifice ceremony
- angakok
- On the Web:
- Academia - Shamanism (PDF) (Mar. 19, 2025)
A shaman wears regalia, some part of which usually imitates an animal—most often a deer, a bird, or a bear. It may include a headdress made of antlers or a band into which feathers of birds have been pierced. The footwear is also symbolic—iron deer hooves, birds’ claws, or bears’ paws. The clothing of the shamans among the Tofalar (Karagasy), Soyet, and Darhat are decorated with representations of human bones—ribs, arm, and finger bones. The shamans of the Goldi-Ude tribe perform the ceremony in a singular shirt and in a front and back apron on which there are representations of snakes, lizards, frogs, and other animals.
An important device of the shaman is the drum, which always has only one membrane. It is usually oval but sometimes round. The outer side of the membrane, and the inside as well among some peoples, is decorated with drawings; e.g., the Tatars of Abakan mark the membrane with images of the Upper and Lower Worlds. The handle is usually in the shape of a cross, but sometimes there is only one handle. The drumstick is made of wood or horn, and the beating surface is covered with fur. In some cases the drumstick is decorated with human and animal figures, and rattling rings often hang down from it.
During the trance brought on by the sound of the drum, the spirits move to the shaman—into him or into the drum—or the soul of the shaman travels to the realm of the spirits. In the latter case the shaman makes the journey on the drum as if riding on an animal, the drumstick being his lash. Sometimes the shaman makes the journey on a river and the drum is his boat, the drumstick his oar. All this is revealed in the shaman song. Besides the drum, the Buryat shaman sometimes makes the journey with sticks ending in the figure of a horse’s head. The shaman of the Tungus people, who raise reindeer, makes the journey on a stick ending in the figure of a reindeer’s head. Among some people, the shaman wears a metal disk known as a shaman-mirror.
Drama and dance
Shamanic symbolism is presented through dramatic enactment and dance. The shaman, garbed in regalia, lifts his voice in song to the spirits. This song is improvised but contains certain obligatory images and similes, dialogue, and refrains. The performance always takes place in the evening. The theater is a conical tent or a yurt; the stage is the space around the fire where the spirits are invoked. The audience consists of the invited members of the clan, awaiting the spirits in awe. A stage lighter and decorator, the shaman’s assistant, tends the fire so as to throw fantastic shadows onto the wall. All these effects help those present to visualize everything that the recited action of the shaman narrates.
The shaman is simultaneously an actor, dancer, singer, and, indeed, a whole orchestra. This restless figure is a fascinating sight, with his cloak floating in the light of a fire in which anything might be imagined. The ribbons of his regalia flit around him, his round mirror reflects the flames, and his accoutrements jingle. The sound of his drum excites not only the shaman but also his audience. An integral characteristic of this drama is that those who are present are not mere objective spectators but rather faithful believers, and their belief enables the shaman to achieve results, as in healing physical or mental illnesses.
Among some people—the Altai Kizhi, for instance—a tall tree is set into the smoke opening at the top of the tent, symbolizing the Tree of the World. The shaman ascends the tree to the height of the Upper World, which is announced to his audience through the text of his song.
Persistence of shamanism
Traces of shamanism may be found among peoples who have been converted to other religions, as in the Finno-Ugric peoples who became Christians (see Finno-Ugric religion), Turkic peoples in Central Asia and Asia Minor who became Muslim, and Mongols who became Buddhists. Among the Finns, the tietäjä, a figure equivalent to the shaman, also is born with one more tooth than normal. Among the Osmanlı Turks of Asia Minor, the horned headwear of the shaman is remembered in popular belief. Among groups that have converted to Christianity, Islam, or another world religion, former shamanistic practices may be revealed through an analysis of folklore and folk beliefs. An example of such a case is the discovery of shamanism in early Hungarian cultures. In contrast, shamanism was excluded among the Khalkha-Mongolian and eastern Buryat, who became Buddhists, and among the Kazakh and Kyrgyz who adopted Islam, and it was greatly changed and developed into an atypical form by the Manchurians.
In northern Asia shamanism appears in various forms. In the most northern parts, among the Chukchi, Koryak, and Itelmen, the shaman does not exist as a member of a special profession; instead, the role is fulfilled by a suitable member of the family—often an old woman. Elsewhere, many shamans are transgender persons who have adopted feminine (if male) or masculine (if female) clothing and behavior. Among the Yukaghir of Arctic Siberia, shamanism is part of the cult of the clan; so also among pockets in the Ob-Ugrian peoples and among all three Altaic peoples: Turkic, Mongol, and Manchu-Tungus. These groups all rely on professional shamans.
Certain scholars have investigated ecstatic actions that may be adjudged outside the area of shamanism in the strictest sense. Mircea Eliade studied these phenomena in North and South America, Southeast Asia and Oceania, Tibet, and China (see below Shamans outside of northern Asia), and S.P. Tokarev studied them in Africa. Some scholars suppose that the phenomena of shamanism spread to the two American continents when the first settlers migrated from Asia. The shamanistic phenomena in the Shintō religion of Japan are attributed to the migration of nomadic peoples from the territory bordering northern Korea.
Those who oppose this broad usage of the term shamanism argue that an apparent structural similarity among phenomena in widely separated areas does not justify an assertion of a common source or that typological similarity must be distinguished from a genetic connection. For them, shamanism may be attributed only to a precise pattern of cultural phenomena in a specific, well-defined territory, one that forms a concrete, systematic whole, such as the religious systems of the peoples mentioned at the beginning of this section.
Vilmos DiószegiShamans outside of northern Asia
Although the classic model and most complete expression of shamanism is found in the Arctic and Central Asian regions, the phenomenon must not be considered as limited to those countries. It is encountered, for example, in Southeast Asia, Oceania, and among many American aboriginal tribes, although it does not play a role of the first order in Africa except among those few groups that have remained hunters and gatherers, such as the San. A distinction is to be made, however, between the religions dominated by a shamanistic ideology and by shamanistic techniques (as is the case with Siberian and Indonesian religions) and those in which shamanism constitutes instead a secondary phenomenon.
The American Arctic
Shamanism predominates in the religious life of the Inuit and Yupik (Eskimo) peoples. In these cultures the chief prerogatives of the shaman (angakok; plural angákut) are healing and trance-based underwater journeys to the Mother of Animals for the purpose of assuring an abundance of game and aiding childless women in conception. Sickness is brought on by the violation of a taboo or results from the capture of the soul by a ghost. In the first case the shaman strives to drive out the impurity by collective confessions; in the second case the shaman undertakes a journey to heaven or to the depths of the sea to retrieve the sick person’s soul and restore it to its body. The angakok is also a specialist in magic flight. Some are reputed to have visited the Moon; others claim to have flown around the Earth. They also know the future, make prophecies, predict changes in the weather, and excel at magic feats.
American Indians
Among many American Indian peoples shamanism constitutes the most important aspect of the religious life. The shaman is characterized by supernatural power acquired as the result of a direct personal experience. Whether this power is obtained spontaneously or after a voluntary vision quest, the future shaman has to undergo certain initiatory trials. In general, shamans in these groups utilize their power in such a way as to affect the whole society. The shaman’s principal function is healing, but important roles may also exist in other magico-religious rites related to communal hunting, secret societies, or mystical movements such as the Ghost Dance.
North and South American shamans, like all their fellows, claim to control the weather, know the future, be able to expose the perpetrators of thefts, and so on. A shaman enjoys considerable prestige and authority as a healer, as the intermediary between humans and the gods or spirits, and, in certain regions, as the guide of souls of the dead to their new abode. They also guarantee that ritual observances are properly conducted, defend the tribe against evil spirits and sorcery, point out places for fruitful hunting and fishing, increase wildlife, and ease childbirth. South American shamans can also fill the role of sorcerer; they can, for example, become animals and drink the blood of their enemies.
It is probable that a certain form of shamanism was diffused on the two American continents with the first waves of immigrants from Asia; later contacts between northern Asia and North America made Asian influence possible well after the penetration of the first immigrants.
Southeast Asia and Oceania
Shamanism is prevalent in the Malay Peninsula and in Oceania. Among the peoples of the Malay Peninsula, the shaman heals with the help of celestial spirits or by using crystals of quartz. But the influence of Indo-Malayan beliefs is noticeable, too, as when shamans are said to change into tigers or to achieve trance by dancing. In the Andaman Islands the shaman gets his power from contact with spirits. The most common method is to “die” and return to life, the traditional pattern of shamanic initiation. The shamans gain their reputation through their acts of healing and the quality of the weather they create through meteorological magic.
The distinctive marks of Malayan shamanism are the calling forth of the tiger’s spirit and the achievement of the trance (lupa), during which the spirits seize the shaman, possess him, and reply to questions asked by the audience. Mediumistic qualities also are characteristic of different forms of shamanism in Sumatra, Borneo, and Celebes. Among the Ngadju-Dayak of Borneo there exists a special class of shamans, the basirs (literally, “incapable of procreation”). These intersex individuals (hermaphrodites) are considered to be intermediaries between heaven and earth because they unite in their own person the feminine element (earth) and the masculine element (heaven).
Possession by gods or spirits is a peculiarity of Polynesian ecstatic religion. The extreme frequency of possession in that region has made possible a proliferation of priests, inspired persons, healers, and sorcerers, any of whom may perform magical cures. For this reason it is not possible to speak of shamanism stricto sensu in Polynesia.
Among Australian Aborigines, a person becomes a shaman through a ritual of initiatory death, followed by a resurrection to a new and superhuman condition. This initiatory death, like that of the Siberian shaman, has two specific marks not found elsewhere in combination: first, a series of operations performed on the candidate’s body (opening of the abdomen, renewal of the organs, washing and drying of the bones, insertion of magical substances); second, an ascent to heaven, sometimes followed by trance journeys into the otherworld. The revelations concerning the secret techniques of the medicine men are obtained in trance, a dream, or in the waking state before, during, or after the initiatory ritual proper.
Mircea Eliade The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica