The word "shaman" (sometimes pronounced SHAH-men and sometimes pronounced SHAY-men) is borrowed from Tungus and Chukchee, two Ural-Altaic languages of Siberia, and has been generalized as a generic term to refer to a specialist in supernatural affairs who typically:
- does not belong to a religious hierarchy
- is not a full-time religious specialist
- operates in trance
- is believed when in trance to be possessed by a spirit and/or to be able to travel to a realm of spirits and to do or see spiritual things there
- engages in healing, often by use of the "sucking cure" in which the shaman acts as though a small object has been sucked from the body of a sick person
In fact not all shamans conform completely to this description. (In my experience, Chinese shamans do not perform the sucking cure, for example.)
Shamanism is found in societies of any scale, from small bands of foragers to modern Korea. However it is particularly characteristic of band and tribal societies in which there are no full-time religious practitioners and no alternative system of healing except herbalism.
Shamans are charged with discovering the causes of illness and misfortune and with guiding community members through personal or family crises like pain, loss, and death. In this, they inevitably function as, in effect, the representatives of community opinion (expressed as the voice of a supernatural). Shamans express generally shared values and pronounce judgments on the behavior of their shamanic "patients" if a patient's behavior is believed to have been offensive to supernaturals or otherwise responsible for his or her suffering.
Violation of a taboo is frequently identified as a cause of illness. Analytically, conformity to taboos communicates belief in shared values and a willingness to cooperate in one's social group. It follows that regarding illness or misfortune as the result of taboo violation is a statement that non-conformity brings punishment. Often a shaman's analysis of a patient's situation is articulated quite publicly. The potential impact of shamanic interpretation in a social group makes it inviting in at least some cases to view shamans as an important source of social and intellectual conformity in small communities, a sort of censorial voice of the community.
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Content Revised: 2013-01-25
Software Last Modified: 2022-05-30
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