Shamanism

I have been reading Ronald Hutton's book, "Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination" (2001).

I made some notes and I thought I might as well write them up into a summary of some of the things I found interesting in the book, in case it's of use to anyone here.

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I think it's fair to say the main message of the book is that Siberia was very diverse - ethnically, linguistically and culturally - and that the practices of Siberian shamans were similarly diverse. Hutton also emphasises the difficulty of interpreting the written evidence, as different accounts can disagree even when they relate to the same people. On top of that, shamanism itself was changing during the period when it was being recorded, and was actually being wiped out during the Soviet period when the quality of the recording was highest.

So a large part of the book is a detailed survey of various aspects of Siberian shamanism, examining which features are common and which vary. Unfortunately the sheer weight of detail doesn't make for readability. But by page 110, Hutton is in a position to distil what he sees as the essential features. The shaman served other members of the community by communicating with spirits, and sometimes by travelling to spirit-worlds. This involved a dramatic public performance, and the use of distinctive costume and specialised equipment. Also mostly, and perhaps always, an altered state of consciousness. The most important functions of shamans were as healers and diviners, but sometimes they also addressed the well-being of the community as a whole. Most shamans were male, but there was a significant minority of women.

On two subjects that may be of particular interest here:

(1) As far as the use of drugs is concerned, Hutton finds the evidence clear that fly agaric played only a minor part, and in only one area of Siberia, the north west. (This was in contrast to what happened in South America.)

(2) As to whether the spirits were in any sense real, Hutton first of all says that's not an appropriate question for most academic anthropologists, as the consensus is that practices need to be studied on their own terms without making such judgments. But he does go on to consider whether the seemingly miraculous parts of shamanic performances were simply conjuring tricks or something more. He says some researchers have suggested that self-hypnosis, and suggestion and hypnosis of the audience, may have played a part. He then mentions a Soviet academic, Vladimir Basilov, who suggested that when in a hypnotic trance shamans could intuitively diagnose the causes of ailments and the means of curing them. Hutton feels this comes close to ascribing magical powers to shamans, and takes it as an indication that their abilities may indeed have gone beyond what could be explained conventionally. He finds this a "disturbingly open question."

In a way I found the last three chapters of the book the most interesting, in which Hutton considers the origins and historical development of shamanism, and the relationship with similar practices elsewhere in the world.

Evidently there are two main schools of thought: (1) that Siberian shamanism is an extremely ancient practice that influenced Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions and (2) that Siberian shamanism is a medieval fusion of native traditions and Buddhism. (I must confess I don't really understand what features of Buddhism are meant to have been influential on - or influenced by - shamanism. There is a passing reference to "Buddhist elements" saturating the culture of south-east Siberia earlier on, but that's it as far as I can see.)

But Hutton thinks it's impossible to decide, because there aren't any written sources for Siberian shamanism before the 16th century, or for central Asia before the 13th. Petroglyphs may be relevant, and can be thousands of years old, but their meaning is ambiguous. To make matters worse, the Tungus word shaman is almost identical to the Pali word samana/shamana for a Buddhist monk (which probably explains Ancient Greek references to samanaoi).

However, the commoner Siberian term kam does apparently appear in Chinese annals of the 7th and 8th century, describing Kirgiz sorcerers, and in a Persian source from 1302, describing Mongol magicians. Mongol magicians were also described in 1254 by a Franciscan friar named William of Rubruck, and they seem shamanistic as they were said to summon demons by singing and drumming in the dark. Marco Polo too described magicians in south-west China diagnosing diseases by singing and playing music until a devil entered one and spoke through him. Still, even the 7th century wouldn't take us back before medieval times, in Western terms.

Many of the controversies about the historical development of shamanism hinge on how shamanism is defined - whether narrowly or broadly. The Romanian researcher Mircea Eliade proposed an ancient universal shamanism, whose essential features were the abilities to control spirits and to journey to spirit-worlds. On this basis he found widespread examples of shamanism in primitive societies throughout the world, but particularly in the Americas. Eliade believed shamanism had diffused rather than developing independently in different places (though Hutton doesn't feel the geographical distribution of Siberian-type shamanism bears this out). Later Ioan Lewis produced a wider definition in which people didn't need to be in control of the spirits, but could be voluntarily possessed by them, which allowed a lot more African practices to be included.

In contrast, Hutton obviously favours a narrower definition, in which the public performance involving singing, drumming and dancing is vital. (But his use of this criterion seems a bit uneven to me.)

Hutton is also sceptical about proposals that shamanism influenced Zoroastrianism (based on the idea that visits to heaven and hell are essentially shamanistic spirit-journeys) and the Ancient Greeks (previously widely accepted, but now doubted).

But he seems more sympathetic to the idea that palaeolithic art may reflect aspects of shamanism - particularly the argument by Lewis-Williams and Dowson that abstract and geometric designs may be related to the experience of altered states of consciousness.

Hutton then moves on to the question of whether shamanistic practices may have survived later than the palaeolithic in Europe. He mentions a similar suggestion about abstract designs in Irish neolithic art, but that's still a long time ago. He jumps forward to medieval Irish and Welsh texts suggesting that druids and bards may have had their shamanistic side. According to some criteria, figures like Owein ap Urien and Taliesin are shamanic. But Hutton questions this because of a lack of song and dance performances.

Moving east, he finds close parallels to Siberian shamanism in European Russia (the Votyak) and above all among the Lapps, whom he judges to have practised exactly the same sort of shamanism as the Siberians. In fact he sees a reference to the Lapp magicians from the late 12th century as the oldest certain one to Eurasian shamanism. The Lapp magicians are also mentioned in 13th-century Icelandic literature. And in general there are points of contact with shamanism in Norse culture, though few exact parallels.

The Magyars were closely related to the Khants and Mansi in Siberia, and a figure called the 'taltos' has been interpreted as the Magyar shaman. It's also been suggested shamanistic practices were found over a wider area extending into the Balkans in the medieval period. This is based on various traditions, including the 'benendanti' in the Italian province of Friuli, who sent out their spirits while they were sleeping to fight against witches. There were similar figures in the Balkans. In Romania, Serbia and Macedonia there are references to magicians communing with spirits in a trance. And a wider connection has been made with folkloric traditions of flying witches and aerial wild hunts. But again Hutton is hesitant to call this shamanism because of the lack of song and dance performances. He sees the nocturnal Balkan witch-fighters as a separate phenomenon, and notes that they are also found on the other side of the Black Sea, in the Western Caucasus. He is more approving of a reference to Moldavian sorcerers in 1648, because they put on a public performance (though without any mention of spirits!). But he says it's possible they were associated with a Magyar tribe there called the Tchango.

Finally, Hutton moves on to modern practitioners and the future of practising shamans. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Siberian shamanism was tolerated again. But it had been eradicated to such an extent that it's unclear whether modern-day shamans really have links to the previous practitioners. The situation is complicated by the emergence of 'neoshamanism' or 'urban shamanism' in the USA, reinvented as a means of personal development and represented by Michael Harner's Foundation for Shamanic Studies. This is inspired almost entirely by Native American practices (though often not approved of by Native Americans), but also considers Siberian shamanism as the same phenomenon. So Harner's Foundation is making grants to some present-day Siberian shamans and actually sending teachers to train others in 'neoshamanism'. Hutton clearly disapproves.

Courtesy of Mysterious Universe, here's an article from Science Magazine discussing the discovery, in 2008 in the Bolivian Andes, of a "shaman's pouch" dating from around the year 1000, whose contents have recently been analysed:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/...th-america

The journal publication is behind a paywall, but the abstract is available here:
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/...1902174116

The pouch was in a bag together with equipment for crushing seeds and inhaling powder, and contained "at least five psychoactive substances: cocaine, benzoylecgonine, bufotenine, harmine, and dimethyltryptamine." Two of these - harmine and DMT - are the main ingredients in ayahuasca. This find is considered interesting because, while it's claimed that ayahuasca has been used for a long time, archaeological evidence of that has previously been lacking, and also because it suggests the psychoactive effects may have been first discovered through inhalation rather than drinking a brew. It also points to long-distance trade in these substances, as they weren't all native to the region where the pouch was found.

Here's another new post on Massimo Biondi's blog, "Psi Report," (in Italian) with the title of (something like) "Readings around anthropology". They relate to the work of two prominent anthropologists who rseearched shamanism - Mircea Eliade and Ernesto de Martino:
https://psireport.wordpress.com/2020/03/...a-letture/

In front of the bear that has just been cut into pieces, the hunter murmurs a prayer of vertiginous sweetness:

“Allow me to kill you even in the future.”

R. Calasso, The Celestial Hunter

Just to note there are more Shamanism resources in the old Skeptiko Resource Thread

In front of the bear that has just been cut into pieces, the hunter murmurs a prayer of vertiginous sweetness:

“Allow me to kill you even in the future.”

R. Calasso, The Celestial Hunter

"He would be the one who drew them in solitude, who gathered them around him, he would be the one who made them act. This was the deal that had to be transacted in his life. But first his body had to be remade. His physical unity had to be taken apart, organ by organ. His heart, lungs, liver, eyes: nothing could be used as it was. Knowledge implies a cutting up, a division of elements, a change in their substance. Quartz crystals were positioned in key places, the joints articulated once again after the heap of bones had been wrapped in birch bark. It was a torture that took place in solitude, throughout the world.

But the scene was crowded with presences: the dead shamans flocked around the being that had to become one of them. With long knives they separated his flesh from his bones. But that was not enough. The flesh had to be cooked, to be seasoned, to make it perfect. The dead shamans worked away in silent frenzy. They sometimes made the new chosen one stand upright like a pole, then they moved away and pierced him with arrows. Then they approached again, removed the bones from his body, and began counting them, like moneylenders. If there wasn’t the right number, the chosen one became a scrap of junk to be thrown away. He had no true vocation. He was a wretch.

Often the candidate’s head was fixed to the top of a hut. From there he could see how the remainder of his corpse was cut to pieces. It was essential that the future shaman remained conscious and could see, moment by moment, what was happening. The candidate could one day become a shaman only if he had this capacity for contemplation."

 - Calasso, Roberto. The Celestial Hunter (pp. 17-18). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

...But first his body had to be remade. His physical unity had to be taken apart, organ by organ. His heart, lungs, liver, eyes: nothing could be used as it was. Knowledge implies a cutting up, a division of elements, a change in their substance. Quartz crystals were positioned in key places, the joints articulated once again after the heap of bones had been wrapped in birch bark. It was a torture that took place in solitude, throughout the world...But the scene was crowded with presences: the dead shamans flocked around the being that had to become one of them. With long knives they separated his flesh from his bones. But that was not enough. The flesh had to be cooked, to be seasoned, to make it perfect. The dead shamans worked away in silent frenzy...

Shamanism in Northern and Southern Eurasia their distinct methods of change of consciousness

Michael Witzel

This paper seeks to establish that the ‘southern’ shamanism of the San, Andamanese and Australian Aboriginals differs substantially from the well known ‘classical’ Siberian one found in various forms in large parts of Eurasia and the Americas (“Laurasia”)...

Eliade’s discussion of African and, in part, of Australian shamanism, is not adequate,while his version of the ‘typical’ North Asian/Siberian and Amerindian shamanism has been reconfirmed by many scholars. He nevertheless stresses the similarities between Siberian and Australian initiation rites as important for the role of shamanism and its Paleolithic origins, especially the importance of caves. He also compares the insertion of crystals found with the Semang, Australians and South American Indians, which he correctly regards as an archaic trait. The same applies to dissecting of the body of the initiate in Australia and Siberia.

The Sans’ communal dance is accompanied by music made by men and women, using various local instruments and singing. However, this kind of dance is not (yet) the typical solitary dance of the lone (Siberian) shaman, accompanied by a circular drum. Dancing results in a trance collapse...The interaction of music, singers and dancers also produces ‘heat’: the dancers transmit heat (‘boiling’) to each other, and the women’s singing and music, too, activates it; from it, the shaman healers may draw energy. San shamans know of the difficult mastering of their internal heat (n/um) which moves upward from the base of the spine. They use that power for healing. It is controlled by medicine inside their body. The older experienced medicine men control n/um, and call the ‘traveling’ adept back into his body. This description immediately reminds one of the descriptions of some forms of Indian yoga, where the...power is awakened at the bottom of the spine (guhya) and likewise moves upwards, in several stages via a number of centers (cakra), up to the head, and beyond: through the skull it emerges above it. Early evidence for shamanism is found in South African rock art, at 27,000 before the present era. We return now to other remnants of the Out of Africa exodus, the Andamanese, who barely survive on

...The Oko-jumu met the spirits in the jungle, and there got their powers. They continued to go to the jungle to meet spirits as their friends...After initiation, one continued to communicate with the spirits in one’s sleep (dreaming); using their power one could cause and cure illness. Shamanic heat was called kimil, ‘hot’. The word carries many meanings, but it is always connected with extra-ordinary states that were regarded as dangerous, such as: that of young man/woman when passing through or having recently passed through the initiation ceremony; the condition after eating certain types of ‘powerful’ foods.

These conditions produced or had inherent ‘heat.’ Surprisingly, this idea persists in modern India --- whether Hindu or Muslim --- where many objects or persons (like the Guru) are believed to be ‘hot’ and therefore have to be ‘cooled’ down by a variety of methods...The concept is old: there are a number of interesting stories from late Vedic texts onward that tell how to deal with ‘hot’ items or persons...If we combine this information with the Indian idea of a power rising up one’s spine in Yoga, we detect very old pathway dependencies in Indian thought. For, the ancestors of the Andamanese are some of the earliest settlers in the subcontinent, soon after the Out of Africa movement of some 65,000 years ago. The similarity with African (San) concepts notable..

Python shrine found in Botswana

A Norway-based archaeologist has found a cave in Botswana that appears to be a 70,000-year-old religious shrine.

The cave in the Tsodilo hills has a rock with a marked resemblance to a python's head, The Times of London reported. The rock has manmade marks on it and a hiding place behind it that could have been used by a shaman appearing to speak for the python.

Sheila Coulson of the University of Oslo said the indentations on the rock in daylight look like scales. In the light of a fire, the snake appears to move.

"The shaman would have been able to control everything. It was perfect," Coulson said.

If Coulson's find is a shrine, it pushes back the first archaeological evidence of religious beliefs back 40,000 years.

The cave also contained artifacts buried in the floor, including red stone spearheads that had the marks of burning on them.

"It was a ritual destruction of artifacts," Coulson said. "There was no sign of normal habitation. No ordinary tools were found at the site."