Shamanism

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since the notion of tribalism has become more prevalent shamanism is beginning to be recognized as holding the key puzzle in life. Furthermore, it is growing and encompassing many areas such as Psychology, Pharmacology, and even believe it or not Physics. Now before we elaborate on the historical significance of shamaninsm in anthropology it is imperative that a general definition of shamanism is established.

In order to study shamanism the shaman must first be understood. The original word shaman came form the Ural mountains in Russia. It applied to people who acted in several 'non-ordinary' capacities for their tribes. Shamans may be defined as man or a woman who through their ability to enter a trance state in any given moment can influence the course of events, find lost or stolen items and identify the criminal when a crime takes place. Thus in a sense shamanism is the practising of these mechanisms in trying to make sense of the world. As you can see it encompasses ...

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at the time. Other writers on the subject clearly accepted this view as expressed by Luc de Heusch. He sought to develop these ideas into an ambitious, formalistic theory of religious phenomena. He states that shamanism and spirit possession are an antithetical process. The first is an ascent of man to the gods, the second the descent of the gods on men (Lewis,1971,pp.50). So shamanism in de Heusch's view is the movement of pride were man sees himself as an equal to the gods. Possession on the other hand is an incarnation. The distinction between shamanism and possession on the basis of whether spirits were incorporated or not was generally accepted at the time. This ...

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