SHAMAN

(from Tunguso-Manchurian aman, he who knows), in the religious systems of Siberian and Ural-Altaic peoples and in certain analogous systems of other peoples worldwide, a person believed to have the power to heal the sick and to communicate with the world beyond. Although the most complete expression of shamanism is found in the societies of the Arctic and Central Asian regions, the phenomenon is not limited to those areas. It is encountered, for example, among cultures in Southeast Asia and Oceania and among many North American aboriginal groups. A distinction should be made, however, between the religions dominated by a shamanistic ideology and shamanistic techniques (as is the case with Siberian and Indonesian religions) and those in which shamanism constitutes a supplementary phenomenon (for example, African religions). The shaman is medicine man, priest, and psychopomp; that is to say, he cures sicknesses, directs communal sacrifices, and escorts the souls of the dead to the other world. He is able to do all this by virtue of his techniques of ecstasy; i.e., by his power to leave his body at will during a trancelike state. In Siberia and in northeastern Asia a person becomes a shaman by hereditary transmission of the shamanistic profession or by election. More rarely a person can become a shaman by his own decision or upon the request of the clan, but self-made shamans are regarded as weaker than those who inherit the profession or who are elected by a supernatural agency. In North America, on the other hand, the voluntary quest for shamanistic powers constitutes the principal method of selection. No matter how the selection takes place, a shaman is recognized as such only after a series of initiatory trials and the receipt of instructions from qualified masters. The most important function of the shaman in all cultures is healing. Since sickness is thought of as a loss of the soul, the shaman must determine first whether the soul of the sick individual has strayed from the body or has been stolen by demons and is imprisoned in the other world. In the former case the shaman captures the soul and reintegrates it in the body of the sick person. The latter case necessitates a descent to the netherworld, and this is a complicated and dangerous enterprise. Equally stirring is the voyage of the shaman to the other world to escort the soul of the deceased to its new abode; the shaman narrates to those present all the vicissitudes of the voyage as it goes on. Shamanism is the mystical experience that is characteristic of primitive religions. The flight of the shaman to heaven during initiation or ritual sacrifice can be regarded as the most ancient expression of mystical experience known to mankind. But the shaman is not only a mystic. He is just as much the guardian (and largely the creator) of the traditional lore of the tribe. The narrations of his adventurous descents to the netherworld and of his ascents to heaven constitute the material of popular epic poetry among many groups.