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During the last decades of the eighteenth century, knowledge about Siberia inspired Catherine II to create the main character of one of her comedies, The Siberian Shaman. Taking Foucault's dispositif -concept as its theoretical premise, the present paper discusses the historical context in which The Siberian Shaman was written, deconstructs the identity of the comedy's main character, and explores the socio-political purposes for which the comedy was written. By utilising the perspective of entangled history of religions and the methodology of historical discourse analysis, this paper shows that the comedy's alleged "shamanic" content and "anti-shamanic" purpose cannot be taken for granted. Rather, the discourse in The Siberian Shaman should be read as Catherine II's own engagement with the themes of unreason and madness within the philosophical, socio-political and religious context of the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent neuropaleontological research suggests that the parietal lobe has increased in size as much as the frontal lobes in Homo Sapiens over the past 150,000 years, but has not provided a neuropsychological explanation for the evolution of human socialization or the development of religion. Drawing from several areas of research, (i.e., neurodevelopment, neuropsychology, paleoneurology, cognitive science, archeology, and anthropology), we argue that parietal evolution in Homo sapiens integrated sensations and mental processes into a more integrated subjective "sense of self". This enhanced self advanced prosocial traits (e.g., increased empathy, greater social bonding, enhanced theory of mind capacities), promoting more effective socialization skills (e.g., parenting, group cooperation). Conversely, when this enhanced sense of self became inhibited, powerful experiences of self-transcendence occurred. We believe these potent selfless experiences became increasingly sought after though ritual means (e.g., music, dance, vision quests, spirit travel), providing the foundations for the development of shamanism and religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the intricate dynamics of Central Asian religious identity in the context of global and local changes. It examines the interactions between Islam and local pre-Islamic traditions, with a primary focus on R. Charles Weller's book titled, Pre-Islamic Survivals in Muslim Central Asia: Tsarist, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Ethnography in World Historical Perspective. Through a comprehensive assessment of the book, the essay investigates the survival and evolution of pre-Islamic traditions within Central Asia's Muslim communities. The book contributes to the field of Central Asian studies by offering a specialised analysis and shedding light on the formation of religious history and identity in Central Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carlos Castaneda has been studied mostly as a fraud anthropologist, novelist/philosopher and a contributor to the emerging phenomenon of neo-shamanism. Instead, this article focuses on Castaneda's individual philosophy and religious system as developed in his written works. A threefold classification is proposed—early, transitional, and late works, complete with chief characteristics of each. The analysis shows how Castaneda slowly drifted from the scholarly style through stress on the narrative to full-fledged religious texts. These changes also reflect on Castaneda's personal life; from academic ambition through public scandal 'debunking' his counterfeit works to the formation of a little new religious movement, of which Castaneda was a charismatic leader. Unlike most scholarly analyses of Castaneda that focus mainly on the early writings, this article takes into serious consideration his late works and shows that it was here that the author fully developed as a religious thinker and guru. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The revival of shamanism in Southern Siberia is increasingly characterised by online forms of representation. Through digital ethnographic research conducted in Russian, this paper argues that the internet reproduces non-digital narratives and practices endowing them with global, immediate reach in a very widely recognisable form, thus contributing to the amplification, legitimisation and contestation of shamanic power. Analysing the websites of two Irkutsk-area 'shamanic centres', I consider how digitalisation is contributing to the process of institutionalisation of shamanism, reproducing and further legitimising post-socialist hierarchies and structures of power in Buryat shamanism, while highlighting the malleable nature of shamanic power and the web alike. Conversely, I recur to the Buryat concept of khel am (a form of 'omnipresent witchcraft') in relation to two recent news stories of national relevance in Russia involving Siberian shamans, to illustrate the challenge posed by the over-amplification of shamanic power through digitalisation to shamans and their institutions' claims to power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout colonial Spanish America, the missionaries recreated a moralized bestiary drawn from medieval referents and applied to the fauna of the New World. This was the case of the cane toad, kururu (Rhinella diptycha), which was assimilated with the European common toad (Bufo bufo) in the Jesuit missions of Paraguay. In this context, it was used to speed up Lent confessions, embody the Christian concept of lust, and counteract the influence of shamans. This exemplary use of the toad was applied throughout the continent and triggered a paradoxical revival of shamanism, as demonstrated by sources in Guaraní, Nahuatl, and Quechua studied in a long-term perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 17 January 1981, during a cold Winter Day at the height of an authoritarian military regime, a group of South Korean artists named " Baggat Misul [Outdoor Art]" gathered around a riverbank outside Seoul to interact with nature and called it " jayeon misul [nature art]." A young woman artist Yong-sin Suh performed an act the group called "a lark," during which Suh alternated with two male artists in reading aloud sections of newspaper articles. These unhinged, free-spirited acts were inspired by the Korean folk theater tradition of pansori (traditional Korean musical opera), and kut (traditional Korean shamanistic exorcism). Korean shamanism by way of the mudang kut rituals has historically been a Korean indigenous belief intertwined with Buddhism and Taoism and stood as a counterforce to the mainstream nationalist neo-Confucian and imperial Christian conservative legacy that oppressed women and the nonconforming gender-neutral community in South Korea. The paper analyzes the Korean shamanistic elements that were utilized in performative, conceptual, and nature art practices by South Korean artists in the post-WWII period to the present, within the framework of the intersection of Korean feminism, art activism, and shamanistic spirituality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the Nanai in the Russian Far-East, the Russian Orthodox Church has been conducting missions in two villages since 2011. In this article, I analyze the usage of Nanai iconography in the printed Gospel of Luke and of oral myths to tell the Nanai version of the Christian message. A specific Nanai Christianity is thus perceptible, rooted within shamanism, that is, the emic perception of powerful forces at play in the world, with whom humans are in constant negotiations. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Amur region, this analysis will highlight the Indigenous agency in the appropriation of the Christian doctrine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that "esotericism" can usefully be applied to a number of religious currents in Southern Africa. With a focus on Botswana, we survey a range of practices, from traditional "shamanic" healing to Pentecostal NRM s to New Age spiritualities and neoshamanism, some presented here for the first time. The term esotericism is useful for analysing the religious situation in Southern African contexts for three reasons. First, through a typological understanding of esotericism as initiation-based knowledge systems, we define one part of the landscape (usually termed "shamanism") as constituting a form of "indigenous esotericism". Second, through the European colonial expansion, this indigenous esotericism faced a violent rejection campaign that parallels the construction of "rejected knowledge" in Europe. While this forced many practices underground, they have resurfaced within Southern African Christianity. Third, "western" esoteric currents have recently been imported to Southern Africa and enter into dialogues with the "indigenous" forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written about the role of 'shamanism' in the making of Mongol kinship. This article aims to explore the role of Buddhism in constructing kinship, which has received less scholarly attention. In particular, I investigate the ways the 'anti-family' orientation of Buddhism was propagated in Buryat society, which had assigned great social importance to kinship networks. In didactic texts compiled by Buryat lamas for the laity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, lamas argued that, despite the impermanent character of kinship, kinship bonds nevertheless were to be arranged in a proper way to avoid multiplying sins. However, lamas did not offer a ready model or a special Buddhist ideal of the family organisation. Like in other regional contexts, Buddhist ethics were adapted to the existing cultural traditions and mostly emphasised proper roles and responsibilities in conjugal and parent-child relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on the role of staged and rehearsed performance, trickery, and prestidigitation in ritual, acts that many anthropologists have observed and registered in their ethnographic accounts but most often took to be fraud, and consequently were discarded from their analyses and interpretations. The curative episode narrated here as a point of departure was intentionally arranged beforehand by the practitioners to make-believe. It is considered in the context of other deluding and simulative acts that are often engaged in healing ritualized behaviour to address several questions. Is deception an intrinsic property of ritual? Do these acts necessarily entail the judgment of true or false? How can they coexist peacefully in the healer's mind with seriousness and conviction? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the relationship between the biblical prophets and prophetic poetry in terms of the "shamanic complex." First, a short characterization is given of the phenomenon of shamanism in archaic societies, shamanic techniques and alternate states of consciousness, as well as the social, cultural, and political role of shamanic figures. Second, the similarity between shamanism and biblical prophecy is considered. Third, the figure of First Isaiah as presented in the eponymous book in the Hebrew Bible is analyzed in terms of the shamanic complex and shamanic poetics as to aspects of his initiation as prophet and represented features of his actions as prophet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the interface of prophecy and shamanhood from the point of view of intermediation, divination, and magic; performance and cosmology; gender; and social status. The most significant thing in common between prophets and shamans is the role of an intermediary and the superhuman authority ascribed to their activity. Other similarities include the performance in an altered state of consciousness, gender-inclusiveness, as well as some ritual roles and forms of social recognition. The action of the prophets rarely reaches beyond the transmission of the divine word, whereas the shamans' activity is more strongly oriented towards ritual efficacy. The cosmological explanation of prophetic and shamanistic performance is different, and the transgendered roles of the shamans appear stronger. The social status varies according to the different community structures reflected by the source materials. It is argued that, even though the conceptual difference between prophets and shamans should be upheld, there is a strong interface between the two phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that evidence suggests that shamanistic-type healing experts were found in ancient Israel, and that the kind of healing rituals show similarities to other such shamanistic practices in other contexts. Hebrew Scriptures provides evidence for a range of designations for such persons dedicated to the mediating office between humans and the divine, some of which have certainly been involved with the art of curing. Narrative and prophetic literatures offer some illuminating evidence for healing specialists. Particular attention is paid to supplicatory psalms in the Old Testament which suggest the mediating role of healing experts. Further comparisons with Sumero-Babylonian professional rites and Navajo healing chants establish the likelihood of the presence and activities of such shamanistic-type healing experts in ancient Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The almost complete absence of any reference to the terms shaman and shamanism in Biblical Studies has its roots in the historical prejudice in Western scholarship against them, and originated from colonial ethnocentrism and Christian notions of superiority. However, the shaman, defined as a practitioner who based on the alteration of ordinary consciousness serves a community with particular functions, represents a recognisable pattern in numerous cultural settings while the growth in the multidisciplinary study of shamanism in recent decades shows a growth in one of the oldest patterns of religious activities in human history. The study of shamanism does not only provide a body of comparative research but analytical models for explaining the most extraordinary and anomalous aspects found also in biblical texts, namely, prophesy, divination, healing and exorcism as well as heavenly journeys and spirit possession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans have a unique ability to coordinate their imaginations and together explore virtual spaces. Shamanic traditions have cultivated this ability and developed powerful techniques to share mental travels. This article discusses two basic types of shamanic seance spread among indigenous peoples in North Asia and partly in North America and explores the relational and sensory-cognitive contrasts between these ritual techniques. One is carried out in the dark and the audience is more focused on hearing, while in the other the tent is light and watching the shaman's act is a central part of the participants' experience. This article describes the geographical distribution of these rituals and analyses the different ways in which they divide cognitive labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The story of the goldsmith Ḥasan al-Baṣrī in the Arabian Nights preserves numerous traces of more ancient stories and testimonies of cultures apparently distant geographically and historically. In particular, it is possible to identify various elements that refer to the symbols and customs of shamanism, although transformed and rewritten according to the Arab-Islamic culture. The same phenomenon is found with the fragments of Greek mythology scattered throughout the story and especially with the adventures of the Argonauts whose affinities with the story of Ḥasan are rather amazing. The study has been conducted by comparing three BNF manuscripts that present significant differences in some points, reflecting the evolution of the Arabic text and the different mentality of the copyists who have reworked some passages. The changes concern above all the role of female protagonists particularly numerous throughout the tale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious practices centered on controlled trance states, such as Siberian shamanism or North African zar , are ubiquitous, yet their characteristics vary. In particular, cross-cultural research finds that female-dominated spirit possession cults are common in stratified societies, whereas male-dominated shamanism predominates in structurally flatter cultures. Here, we present an agent-based model that explores factors, including social stratification and psychological dissociation, that may partially account for this pattern. We posit that, in more stratified societies, female agents suffer from higher levels of psychosocial trauma, whereas male agents are more vulnerable in flatter societies. In societies with fewer levels of formal hierarchy, males come into informal social competition more regularly than in stratified contexts. This instability leads to a cultural feedback effect in which dissociative experiences deriving from chronic psychosocial stress become canalized into a male religious trance role. The model reproduces these patterns under plausible parameter configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In post-socialist Mongolia, unsuccessful treatment, or worse, interventions that result in worsened health conditions, are common concerns. Patients and clients direct scepticism towards a range of practitioners, from biomedical physicians to shamans and 'folk' healers (domch). The gap between the ideal treatment and the actual outcome--the prevalence of treatment misfires--invites analysis of infrastructural changes to (health)care and wider contexts of relationality. As state-owned medicine was restructured in the 1990s, healing 'traditions' such as shamanism and Traditional Mongolian Medicine considered essentialised aspects of national identity have gained new legitimacy. Many people find it challenging to navigate the multiple authorities on health and wellbeing that exist in contemporary public. Patients and clients often questioned efficacy in terms of toxicity and poison (hor, horlol). Toxicity's associations with Sovietera regulation and Buddhist medical contexts articulate the importance of both statesanctioned regulation and the practitioner's specialised knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hypothesis of ancient Chinese shamanism popularized by K. C. Chang in the 1980s has long been one of the central problems in the study of Chinese archaeology. By examining the structures that constitute Chang's shamanic framework, this article argues that the problem centers around two major issues. The first is that Chang follows a tradition in Chinese academic historiography of using late historical texts to interpret Neolithic and Bronze Age materials. The second is that, in order to explore the dynamics of the formation of Chinese civilization, he employs Western theories in his construction of the history of shamanism. This article discusses the problems associated with using textual materials for interpretations of archaeological finds. It also discusses “substratum theory," the way in which it influenced Chang's understanding of shamanic civilization, and the manner in which Western anthropological theory was incorporated into Chang's historiographical model. Accordingly, the author concludes that this shamanism problem in Chinese archaeology actually stems from a mixture of the Chinese historiographical tradition and Western anthropological theories, which together make Chang's writing develop a meta-narrative that leads directly to two characteristics: generalization and polymorphism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines various options that scholars have explored in their efforts to construct a history of shamanism. Recognizing Eliade's promise that such a history lies in the near future, the article then explores the important ways in which this has been undertaken. It specifies four such ways: with prehistoric rock art, the origins of cultural myths, memory studies, and movements of cultural resistance. Ultimately resisting each of these four options while paying particular attention to the case of early Chinese shamanism, its concluding sections recognize the work of Mircea Eliade and Roberte Hamayon as providing two alternative pathways that might lead into possible constructions of this history, and it then attempts to locate a third way between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1990s, Kalmykia, in common with the other republics and ethnic groups of the former Soviet Union, has been going through a period of religious and cultural reconstruction after decades of the atheistic policy during the communist era. This article focuses on a modern Kalmyk category of religious specialists claiming to have received the patronage of ‘guardian deities’, mostly from the Buddhist pantheon, with the deity the White Old Man being of particular importance. Based on interviews conducted in Kalmykia during 2011 and 2012, this study introduces some of the beliefs and ritual activities of these practitioners, discusses functions they perform in society and offers a description of their initiation ceremonies, with the primary aim of exploring what ‘accepting divine patronage’ implies in the present-day Kalmyk context. The author argues that receiving the tutelage of deities, and hence claiming special healing and visionary abilities, is a proliferating phenomenon in Kalmykia and can be regarded as a distinctive particularity of its contemporary religious scene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sakha national revival in Sakha (Yakutia), Siberia, aims to recover dying elements of Sakha culture, in order to preserve the Sakha people's distinctive identity. And yet this revival is itself imbued with assumptions rooted in the European cultures that initiated modernist colonisation. Contemporary Sakha shamanism reflects the tensions within the nationalist revival, in the contrasting tendencies for activists, firstly, to recover what is seen as the old, genuine shamanic practice--and, secondly, to assimilate foreign spiritual techniques. But when these two strands of endeavour are examined with reference to the perceptions of person and environment that formed the basis of pre-Soviet Sakha life, it becomes apparent that they complement each other. Both facilitate the intersection of contrasting knots of relationship, predicated on differing ontologies. Sakha people currently live and work within institutions that have their roots in European modernism. However, older Sakha relationships with a live natural environment have not entirely disappeared. The authors suggest that the persistent presence of an environment imbued with spiritual agency differentiates the Sakha shamanic revival from the European traditions that shape its central motivations. This case reveals the importance of attending to place and environment, in the discussion of post-colonialist identity politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gilgit-Division (northern Pakistan) and the Dah-Hanu area (the westernmost part of Ladakh, India) have always been difficult to access. This is due in part to the mountainous terrain, which is made even more treacherous by the prevailing security instability (certain areas are still off limits for foreigners due to the Kashmir conflict). Hence, there has been very little anthropological research undertaken in this area over the last 50 years. The present paper attempts to revive the interest in these neglected regions by examining ancient traits of shamanism, as well as the worship of pre-Islamic and pre-Buddhist deities, still prevailing around Gilgit and in the Dah-Hanu area. Furthermore, this study sheds light on the history, culture and religion of the Shin people. It does so by elaborating on the changes the old Dardic belief system underwent in order to adapt to the missionary efforts of "world-religions" conquering the region. Finally, this work attempts to explain and date the different Shin-migrations, which took these people from their homesteads in Kohistan to the Gilgit region and from there to the Dah-Hanu area. The research is based on interviews carried out by the author in Gilgit, Bagrot, Hunza and Nagar, as well as in the DahHanu area (15 male and 15 female shamans; 6 male priests, and numerous villagers) between 2011 and 2013. In addition, the author witnessed the very rare initiation of a male shaman in Lower Hunza. He further observed two shamanic seances in the Dah-Hanu area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to rethink the relationship between the practice of shamanism and the political-economic 'context' it is held to emerge from in contemporary Mongolia. In the face of an extraordinary 'revival' in shamanism, anthropologists have sought explanations for the phenomenon that centre around a concern with how to locate it in relation to the social, economic and political structures alongside which it manifests. Authors tend to produce accounts that either reduce shamanism to an expression of more fundamental material realities, or explore the cosmo-ontological parameters of the practice itself, in turn masking its articulation with other processes in the social field. This point will be illustrated with reference to a novel ethnography of the making of the shamanic gown in Ulaanbaatar. Yet more than this, it will be suggested that a more sustained reflection upon the nature of the shamanic gown, and consideration of new information regarding the processes that contribute to its creation, might provide the means to theorise in a rather different fashion. The shamanic gown and the people and things mobilised in its emergence do not simply collect social and theoretical contexts, but rather flow outward. As such, while being both intimately reactive and irreducible to the adjacent realities, Mongolian shamanism also engages in the making of these very structures. Shamanism and the making of shamanic gowns do not simply emerge from, or deny, contexts; they assemble them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores perceptions of zoos, objects which are generally replicas of Manchu-era coins attached to the surfaces of some shamans' coats in present-day Mongolia. Beginning by noting that the general perception of these objects in shamanic praxis is to protect the shaman who wears them, I explore another way in which they are perceived: as things which connote particular aspects of money used in present-day Mongolia. I take two aspects of Mongolian money--its multiplicity and capacity for transformation--and use these to account for the presence of zoos on shamans'' coats. I argue that the multiplicity aspect of money is analogous with the multiplicity of objects attached to a shaman's coat, and that the multiplicity aspect of money connoted by zoos is something into which can be read the operation of this type of garment. I also explore the capacity of Mongolian money to be transformed into other things, and suggest this is analogous to the transformative nature of spirits which possess shamans during seances. In doing so, I propose that zoos are able to elaborate the operation of the garments to which they are attached, in a way that is informative of particular perceptions of money in present-day Mongolia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, Mongolia has been enjoying rapid economic growth thanks to the development of its enormous natural resource deposits of copper, coal, gold, petroleum, and so on. However, due to the consequent social instability, the number of shamans has increased dramatically over the last 10 years, especially in the capital city Ulaanbaatar and mining towns. In this paper, I will explore shamanic activities around the Oyu Tolgoi mining site in South Gobi, examining what kinds of people are actually becoming shamans and how they become shamans, as well as what activities they are involved in with relevance to the dramatic socio-economic and environmental changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant body of Muslim religious rites, with roots in Sufi devotional practice, continued to be conducted in Central Asia well into the Soviet era, despite Soviet antireligious policies and pressures. Reflecting communal adaptations of the Sufi dhikr, or "remembrance" of God, as part of healing or funerary ceremonies, these rites were reclassified, in Soviet ethnographic literature, as vestiges of "shamanism," and thus largely escaped notice by western observers of "Soviet Islam," who imagined 'Sufism' in terms of clandestine militant organizations intent on undermining the Soviet regime. This paper explores the reclassification of Sufi activity as shamanism, notes historical evidence on the diffusion of Sufi rites into wider public circles, and suggests some implications of these developments for our understanding of Soviet Islam, Central Asian Sufism, and the phenomena of "shamanism." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of Japanese shamanism are on the decline while neo-shamanistic practitioners thrive in Japan's large cities. Based on this observation, the authors of this paper put forward two arguments. First, we claim that a rhetorical approach to the development of scholarly interest in Japanese shamanism reveals the existence of a rigid definitional framework that either ignores or undervalues new types of shamanistic practitioners. Nevertheless, certain theories stemming out of ethnographic work by Japanese researchers, such as the classifications of shamanistic initiations, could be adapted to the analysis of today's Japanese neo-shamanism. We demonstrate our first argument by dividing a sample of "spiritual therapists" according to the most commonly used Japanese scholarly typology of "hereditary" (seshūgata), "calling" (shōmelgata), and "quest (training)" (tankyū [shugyō] gata) types of shamanistic initiations, and by comparing their experiences with those of 'traditional' shamans. Our second argument concerns the basis for such comparison. In this respect, we join recent debates that put classic explanatory models of New Age individualized eclectism in doubt, and argue that, like 'traditional' shamans, contemporary Japanese spiritual therapists choose their profession and legitimize their role in constant interaction with, and often under the pressure of their environment We conclude that, despite differences in content, forms of older and newer practices of shamanism resemble to such a degree that a revival of the academic field of Japanese shamanism may be in order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores theater as a means for enabling conversation and therapeutic healing, outlining the research of Sara Matchett exploring autobiographical dramatic performance within the perspectives of cartography and shamanism. The specific enactment and analysis of these ideas through the South African women's collaborative work "Washa Mollo" is also addressed.

This article is a response to the critical evaluation by Christian Strecker of my book, The Life of a Galilean Shaman:Jesus of Nazareth in Anthropological-Historical Perspective (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2008; hereafter LGS). Anthropological historiography is set as an alternative framework to historical criticism for the discussion about Jesus as an historical figure. The dialogue with Strecker follows the three main categories of his evaluation; namely, the feasibility of a new historiographical paradigm for historical Jesus research, the shamanic complex as a cross-cultural analytical model and the testing of the shamanic hypothesis against the Gospel traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay commends Pieter Craffert's book "The Life of a Galilean shaman" as an important contribution in the field of Jesus studies. At the same time it reveals that Crafferts attempt to identify Jesus as a Galilean shaman is problematic, particularly considering the enigmatic nature of the category "shaman." Western discourse on shamanism tends to contain an unwelcome mix of exoticism, alienation, and fascination; transferring this model to the life of Jesus is in danger of applying anachronistic and ethnocentric notions to the historical Jesus, not to mention the difficulties involved in verifying the supposed treatment of shamanic ASC-experiences in the New Testament texts. Although Crafferts new methodological approach of "anthropological historiography", independent of the shamanism thesis, deserves scholarly attention, his employment of it shows an all too rigid, and ultimately counterproductive, rejection of classic historical-critical scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on empirical data gathered in two qualitative field studies of contemporary Western shamans and practising magicians (occultists) in German speaking countries. It emphasizes the importance of extraordinary experiences in the adoption of heterodox worldviews. The findings indicate that such experiences play a decisive role in the adoption of religious and/or spiritual beliefs as well as in individual conceptualization of spirituality. Some methodological considerations in the investigation of extraordinary experiences and their relation to assumed paranormal phenomena are mentioned. A particular problem is that these experiences often seem to contradict the orthodox, commonly accepted scientific worldview. Thus researchers who want to collect information about religious beliefs and spiritual experiences have to allow for participants' possible fear of stigmatization. An empirical phenomenological approach, following the principle of openness (Hoffmann-Riehm) and the method of grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss), seems apposite. In addition to the aforementioned methodological issues the article presents data on aspects of the lived spirituality of contemporary shamans and practising magicians as an example of secondary analysis of interview data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the early 1950s to the mid-1970s, missionaries from several congregations in the south-western Amazon region of Brazil, notably a group of young Jesuits, developed an avant la lettre radical brand of inculturation theology, based on close relations with academic anthropology and cultural relativism. By the 1990s, this "type" of inculturation became one of the missionary norms in the region; it was also instrumental in the creation and orienta-tion of the Indigenist Missionary Council, the main missionary organization in Brazil. 1 explore the trajectories of three inculturation theology Jesuits who asserted the need to protect indigenous cultures, including their shamanic rituals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses learned debates that evolved at the end of the eighteenth century in Europe about the interpretation of shamanism. Intellectuals, philosophers, and enlightened monarchs engaged in controversies about shamanism that were clearly linked to Enlightenment ideals of rationality and religious critique. The article addresses the ambivalence of 'refutation and desire' in French, German, and Russian responses to shamanism, with special attention to the French Encyclopedists, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Catherine the Great. The controversies reveal the intrinsic tension of the European project of 'modernity': what was discussed as 'shamanism,' ultimately turned out to be the result of European self-reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based upon five years of ethnographic research among the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala, India, and extensive interviews with the medium of the State Oracle of Tibet and other spirit mediums. It investigates the nature of the oracular phenomenon and its place in the Tibetan Buddhist cosmology as well as the sociopolitical role of the Tibetan State Oracle, or Nêchung. The topics explored include spirit possession, shamanism, and spirit mediums. The central theoretical question addressed is whether or not magico-religious practitioners such as the medium of Nêchung and other Tibetan spirit mediums can legitimately be categorized as shamans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars routinely confront the problem of translating concepts from one cognitive-linguistic system to another. The concepts 'shaman' and 'shamanism,' which are employed particularly in comparative religious and anthropological studies, are a case in point. Scholars from various academic disciplines make use of different, indistinct, and indeed contradictory definitions of these terms. As a result, their content and meaning have been obscured. My aim in this article is to emphasize the importance of establishing comparative religious concepts as methodical research tools. In particular, I call attention to the need to distinguish between emic (indigenous) concepts and etic (constructed by the scholar) comparative 'ideal types' (Max Weber) in cultural and religious studies. Through the methodology of constructing theoretical analytical notions advocated in this essay, scholars can identify similarities and dissimilarities between assorted phenomena by focusing on what Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss called caracteristiques différentielles. I argue that the fundamental spatial feature which distinguishes shamans from other categories of religious specialists is their unique command of ritual techniques that enable them to move between human and preternatural space, e.g., from the mundane world to the supernatural one and back again. Moreover, I contend that 'shamanism' is not a religion in itself but only a 'configuration' (Åke Hultkrantz) within a religious system. This point is important because numerous scholars tend to reduce so-called 'indigenous religions' to the category of 'shamanism,' thereby depriving these religions of their individual identity. Instead, these religions ought to be recognized and analyzed as distinct systems of belief and practice, just as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism are. The paradigmatic post-colonial reduction of many indigenous religious systems to 'shamanism' has created an impoverished view of religions that are no less complex and sophisticated than the so-called 'Great Traditions.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on the topic of shamanism is reviewed and discussed. Included are works appearing since the early 1990s in the fields of anthropology, religious studies, archaeology, cognitive sciences, ethnomusicology, medical anthropology, art history, and ethnobotany. The survey demonstrates a continued strong interest in specific ethnographic case studies focusing on communities which make use of shamanic practices. Shamanic traditions are increasingly studied within their historical and political contexts, with strong attention to issues of research ideology. New trends in the study of cultural revitalization, neoshamanism, archaeology, gender, the history of anthropology, and the cognitive study of religion are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an examination into the socialist ethnographic research conducted of the Darhad peoples of northern Mongolia in the mid-20th century. Comparisons are made between the Buryat studies of the 1930s with the Hungarian and Mongolian studies of the 1960s. The focus of both studies on the shamanism of the culture is highlighted, noting how it led to future stereotypical perceptions of the Darhad. Further discussion is offered regarding the connection between the ethnography projects and the socialist nationalist efforts of the period.

The purpose of the present study is to explore the epitaph commemorating the warriors that fell at Poteidaia in 432 bce. After looking briefly at the importance of the concept of aither in the history of ideas, I will then analyze the epitaph and its message. Moreover, some ideas of the early Greek philosophers and the tragedians upon the subject will be given. I will conclude that during the sixth and the fifth centuries bce it was a common opinion to assert that the aither, the upper divine region of the atmosphere, was the dwelling place of the soul after the death of the body. Thus, the Archaic and Classical Greeks did not distinguish sharply between the realms of gods and men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon ethnographic data on the thriving and dynamic shamanistic tradition in Nepal (gathered between 1999 and 2008), this paper addresses the problematic nature of many of the central assumptions concerning shamanism and its place in the development of human religiosity. These include beliefs that shamanism was the universal religion of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers and that it represents a neurotheology, the expressions of which have been preserved in ancient cave art and in the magico-religious beliefs and practices of extant or recently extant hunting-gathering cultures on the peripheries of the “civilized world.” The paucity of any concrete testable and falsifiable evidence for any of these assumptions raises the compelling question of why so many anthropologists, archaeologists, and scholars in other fields subscribe to these views. The answer does not lead to some ancient grotto or an undisputable assemblage of Paleolithic shamanic paraphernalia, but to the imagination of Mircea Eliade, whose vision of shamanism is rooted in the musings of nineteenth century anthropologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Processes of revelation and rulemaking are examined in the context of the indigenous religion of the Inuit of arctic Canada. Instances of misfortune, conventionally understood to be the manner in which spirit intentions concerning human conduct are revealed, instigate social mechanisms through which normative rules are created and maintained. The performances of Inuit religious specialists, the angakkuit, play a key role in this process. The Inuit case invites comparative assessments of means of rule construction and the discernment of intentions in the context of both other religious traditions and secular normative systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the background of fascism and the disasters of two world wars, during the first decades of the twentieth century many European intellectuals were formulating negative responses to “modernity” and to what they regarded as the decline of human civilization. Often, these intellectuals sought for alternatives to the modern conditio humana and looked for solutions in religion, art, or philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche's conceptualization of the Dionysian and the Orphic is of particular importance for such a discourse of modernity. After introducing Nietzsche's contribution as a referential framework, the article compares two representatives of this intellectual discourse: Hermann Hesse and Mircea Eliade. At first glance, Hesse, the writer and poet, does not seem to have much in common with Eliade, the scholar of religion and writer of novels. Upon closer examination, however, there are remarkable similarities in their work and their evaluation of the modern human condition. For Hesse, it was art, music, and literature that provided the antidote against the predicaments of modern culture. Eliade shared Hesse's search for an alternative to the modern condition and found it in the pure religion outside of time and space, in the illud tempus of the homo religiosus. For him, it was shamanism in particular that provided a model for a contact with the absolute world of truth untouched by the “terror of history.” The article argues that these dialectical responses are part and parcel of the project of European “modernity” itself, rather than representing an “anti-modern” claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses theoretical interpretations of ethnographic literature which proposes the idea that Siberian shamans in Tuva, Russia are cannibalistic. A discussion of the practice of shamanic cannibalism from the Amerindian perspectivism theory, which suggests that shamans see people as prey animals, is presented. The pragmatic contexts of essentialist schemas and legendary ritual practices associated with spirits who devour people are also discussed. The concepts of idealism, metaphysics, and philosophical realism are mentioned. The interpretation for an exchange of meat in the hunting idiom is noted.

The framework of this paper is provided by a theoretical discussion of the scholarly terms “orthodoxy” and “heterodoxy” and their heuristic value. Local Islam among the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, PRC as well as among other Muslim peoples in Central Asia has often been discussed either as something different from an assumed “real”, “pure” or “official” Islam, or as a distinct religious system in its own right. Such approaches, however, sometimes lose sight of the fact that the question of what “Uyghur Islam” is supposed to be is negotiated among Uyghurs themselves no less vigorously. Traditional practices such as ritual healing and saint veneration are highly contested, yet widely adhered to in Uyghur society. This article examines the complex structures and processes of the religious discourses concerning such practices and some features of their embeddedness in historical, social and political settings. One finding is an increased reference to Islamic scripturalism as a legitimizing strategy for certain ideas, mainly for those targeted at “purifying” Uyghur Islam from local practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Buryat medicine, which derived from Tibeto-Mongolian medical systems and traditions, has thrived in the Transbaikal region from the eighteenth century. There are, however, two main streams in Buryat healing traditions: one deriving from Buryat folk medicine and the other, the main focus of this article, scholarly Tibetan medicine, as transmitted through Mongolian medical culture. As it was adopted in Buryatia, Tibeto-Mongolian medicine went through a process of adaptation to the local environment, most conspicuously in the field of pharmacology. It is here that we find the main original Buryat contributions to the wider development of TibetoMongolian medical culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The native healers are spread all across Iran and belong to various geographical regions and cultural areas. In this study the healing techniques of a number of Turkmen women are introduced. Having a macro vision towards their patients, each of the healers uses a set of various techniques that are special and unique in their own range. Healing has left a direct effect on the personality of the women healers. The variety in techniques is much wider among women than men healers. The treatment manner of the latter is mostly based on a method, which resembles Shamanistic techniques. The healing methods in the rural society are more original and intact, than in the urban centres. According to the statements made by the healers, the healing methods (at least in the macro vision form of it) can neither be taught nor be learned. Only unique individuals endowed with special abilities in completely exceptional conditions can be selected for performing the healing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his poetry and essays, Gary Snyder has developed a syncretic blending of two cultures: Buddhist and Native American. He has written about their similarities and historical links, and has noted how their differences complement one other. Such an intercultural project has been criticized by those who have claimed that one cannot simply take ideas and values from foreign cultures: they are culturally embedded and we are bound to the character and limits of our culture. In addition, some Native Americans have called his cultural borrowing from their culture an inauthentic "white shamanism." Snyder, however, would argue that shamanism and animism are world-wide human phenomena and have been kept alive in what he calls the Great Subculture. Modern people can have access to them through serious and humble spiritual learning. Two concepts can help us understand Snyder's intercultural project. The first is Bahktin's notion of "anotherness," in which difference is affirmed but dialogue and exchange are possible. The second is an ecological theory of culture, which argues against cultural essentialism by recognizing that cultures are both distinct and interwoven and ever changing. Thus authentic intercultural borrowing is a possibility. For Snyder, it is also a necessity if we are to develop a healthy relationship to each other and the natural world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines shamanism and related religious phenomena in ancient China by exploring myths, legends, and histories described in transmitted texts; relevant archaeological data; and modern ethnographic records. Definitions and terminological issues are addressed, and a three-stage evolutionary sequence is suggested for the development of religion in China (primitive religion, polytheistic religion, and monotheistic religion). The terminological distinctions for religious practitioners are also presented, including magicians, sorcerers, and priests. Archaeological evidence for religious activities before the emergence of complex societies helps to fill in some of the gaps found in the textual records that relate legends ascribed to these early periods. The varying roles of magicians/shamans in the formation of complex societies in North China are examined. Finally, the rich evidence for shamanism in South China is surveyed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]