Shamanism

Shamanism was characterized by Mircae Eliade (1964 [1950]), the famed scholar of comparative religion, as someone who entered an ecstatic state to interact with the spirits on behalf of the community. These universals of shamanistic healers have been characterized in terms of an innate psychology by Michael Winkelman (2000), who points to other universal characteristics of shamans: Charismatic group leadership in communal ritual activities, generally carried out overnight, involves the use of chanting, music, drumming, and dancing. Ecstasy, an altered state of consciousness, is a key aspect of training and practice, with the characteristic altered states of consciousness experience known as the soul journey, or soul flight. Interaction with the spirit world, in training and professional practice, includes training involving a vision quest and an initiatory death-and-rebirth experience. Control of animal spirits as a primary source of power includes the ability to transform into animals and to provide assistance in hunting. Professional abilities include healing, diagnosis, and divination. Maintaining an ambivalent moral status reflects the ability to do harm through sorcery.

Gender-specific roles and sexual restrictions of shamanistic healers reflect adaptations to altered states of consciousness and the effects of social processes on characteristics of altered states of consciousness. Relationships of sex and gender to shamanistic healers vary in terms of their social contexts. Cross-cultural research shows how shamanistic healers vary in gender roles as socioeconomic adaptations to universal human potentials involving healing and altered states of consciousness. This research illustrates the validity of the term shaman as a cross-cultural concept. Shamanism is revealed in the universal features of the spiritual healing practices of hunter-gatherer and simple agricultural and pastoral societies worldwide in which transformed men and women engage spirit powers. Shamans and other shamanistic healers manifest cultural universals involving adaptations to potentials of human nature, an integrative mode of consciousness similar to dreams. These altered states of consciousness experiences are induced in community rituals for interactions with the spirit world to obtain information and provide healing.

Shamans differ from other types of shamanistic healers in their altered states of consciousness (soul flight, death-and-rebirth experience), use of sorcery, power relationships with animals, and their preeminent role in society as charismatic leaders. Other types of shamanistic healers are found in societies with priests, male secular and sacred leaders who dominate religious and political life and alter the more egalitarian gender dynamics of shamanism. In these more complex societies shamanistic practices persist in female-dominated cults of medium-ship and possession.

GENDER PATTERNS OF SHAMANISTIC HEALERS

Shamans are predominately males, but in most cultures, females also are chosen, generally inheriting spirits from parents or grandparents. The shaman's involvement in hunting, warfare, and raids may contribute to a male predominance among shamans. There are also restrictions on females practicing shamanism during childbearing years. Women typically function as shamans before marriage and following menopause. These restrictions on female shamans' practice may reflect consequences for cardiovascular function, oxygen availability, and other vital parameters produced by altered states of consciousness, reflected in their conceptualizations as half-death. Risks that altered states of consciousness could pose to the fetus apparently underlie this prohibition on women engaging in shamanic practices when they could be pregnant.

Females are also occasionally found among shamanistic healers of agricultural societies but are virtually absent from the healers found in more complex, politically integrated societies. These hierarchical societies also have shamanistic healers called mediums, who are typically female; relatively infrequent male mediums are often weak or effeminate. These female mediums are generally from lower social strata in strongly patriarchal societies. Mediums are respected people, nonetheless, particularly among women and their possession cult. Mediums experience altered states of consciousness, engage spirits, and provide healing and divination, activities characteristic of shamans; but they differ from shamans in that they lack soul flight, death-and-rebirth experiences, animal relations, sorcery powers, and the high social prestige of shamans. Medium cults involve possession—control by spirit entities that take over the body, speech, and mind of the individual. Female recruits to the cults are those who are ill from spirit possession; they gain control of the spirits through cult participation. Mediums do not typically have long-term sexual restrictions, but their spirit spouses may dictate restrictions on sexual relations with their physical spouses. The predominance of females among mediums may reflect how their disadvantaged status contributes to the malnutrition, abuse, and trauma that may predispose women to altered states of consciousness. Through statements made while possessed by male spirits, mediums mediate male and female domains and exercise indirect influence in a male-dominated society where their subordinated status limits their direct confrontation with male power.

SEXUAL RESTRICTIONS

Shamanistic healers generally refrain from sex in preparation for professional activities. Religious officiants of many major religious traditions are frequently enjoined to permanent celibacy. Sexual restrictions for shamanistic healers normally begin during training, with sexual prohibitions for weeks, months, or even years. Traditions dictate celibacy for several days before and after ceremonies, explaining sexual restrictions in terms of purity and the idea that spirits are attracted to the celibate. Many shamanistic traditions view spirit relations in sexual terms, engaging in sex with spirit entities and having spouses and children in the spirit world. Spirit spouses may be jealous of physical spouses and require that shamans abstain from sex.

Sexual restrictions on shamanistic healers may reflect adaptations to the physiological dynamics of sexual orgasm and induction of altered states of consciousness. Orgasm requires simultaneous increase in both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Julian Davidson (1980) points out that when a peak of excitation is reached, the sympathetic system collapses, exhausted, and the parasympathetic state as with those of altered states of consciousness, becomes dominant. The rebound aspect of the parasympathetic aspect means that the greater the excitation in the sympathetic system before collapse, the stronger the parasympathetic relaxation response. Sexual activity could interfere with the dynamics of excitation and physiological collapse, reducing the degree of sympathetic excitation by prior release in orgasm. Sexual prohibitions may assure more powerful altered states of consciousness. Postceremony sexual restrictions in some shamanistic traditions might relate to the anorgasmic states potentially produced by altered states of consciousness. This is illustrated in the Tantric traditions that use sex with prevention of ejaculation to induce more profound altered states of consciousness.

TRANSGENDERED ACTIVITIES IN SHAMANISM

The belief that shamanism is normally associated with homosexuality or other cross-gendered behaviors is not validated by Michael Winkelman's and Doug White's cross-cultural studies (Winkelman 1990, 1992; Winkelman and White 1986); shamans, shaman/healers and healers are not typically considered to have cross-gendered tendencies. Mediums, however, may incorporate weak, effeminate, or homosexual males. The widespread transvestism associated with Chukchi shamans studied by Waldemar Bogoras (1904–1909) does not appear typical. Homosexual and gender-switching individuals may be attracted to shamanistic roles because changing identities is fundamental to shamanic professional roles involving communication with spirits. Gender crossing does occur in some shamanic enactments as a way of gaining ritual power through incorporating symbols of femininity, but without involving homosexuality.

Barbara Tedlock (2004) points out how aspects of self and identity are defined in the interactions between male and female personalities displayed in shamanic performances. Shamanic performances engage gender expressions in enacting powers in nature, feminine as well as masculine, making shamans mediators between gender concepts. The sacred is often expressed in transformations involving a blending of gender characteristics and gender reversals. Gender dynamics may be expressed in shamanic healing specializations where female powers and energies are engaged for nurturance and integration, whereas male symbols engage warlike activities of exorcism and attacks to defeat spirit entities thought to cause illness. Universal concepts are expressed in gender differences that shamanistic healers can balance and integrate in patients through ritual.

Shamanic practices allow access for both genders, with males predominating in these roles. Sexual restrictions are important consideration in these practices. As societies become more complex, shamanistic practices become more predominantly female. Their incorporation of male spirits give voice to oppressed females and some degree of power in male-dominated societies, including restricting their spouse's sexual access.

see also Witchcraft.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bogoras, Waldemar. 1904–1909. The Chukchee: Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History. Vols. 7 & 11. Leiden: Brill and Stechert.

Davidson, Julian. 1980. "The Psychobiology of Sexual Experience." In The Psychobiology of Consciousness, ed. Julian M. Davidson and Richard J. Davidson. New York: Plenum Press.

Eliade, M. 1964. Shamanism Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. New York: Pantheon Books.

Lewis, I. M. 1971. Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.

Tedlock, Barbara. 2004. "Gender in Shamanism." In Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture, ed. Mariko Namba Walker and Eva Jan Neumann Fridman. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Winkelman, Michael. 1990. "Shaman and Other 'Magico-religious' Healers: A Cross-Cultural Study of Their Origins, Nature, and Social Transformations." Ethos 18(3): 308-352.

Winkelman, Michael. 1992. Shamans, Priests and Witches: A Cross-Cultural Study of Magico-religious Practitioners. Anthropological Research Papers, number 44. Tempe, Az.: Arizona State University.

Winkelman, Michael. 2000. Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey.

Winkelman, Michael, and Doug White. 1986. "A Cross-Cultural Study of Magico-Religious Practitioners and Trance States: Data Base." In HRAF Research Series in Quantitative Cross-Cultural Data, Vol. 3, ed. David Levinson and Richard Wagner. New Haven, CT: HRAF Press.

                                      Michael Winkelman