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Shamans, Priests and Witches: A Cross-Cultural Study of Magico-Religious Practitioners
Abstract
A typology of magico-religious practitioners is determined in a cross-cultural sample. Shamans were found in hunting and gathering societies ; Shaman/Healers and Priests in agricultural societies; and Healers, Mediums, and Malevolent Practitioners in societies with political integration. Analysis of selection procedures and activities suggests three bases for magico-religious practitioners: a universal basis related to trance states; sociopolitical power in societies with political integration ; and conflict between trance-based local power and stratified political power.
... While shamanism was central in comparative religious studies long before Eliade's seminal work, controversy remains regarding the empirical status of the concept, that is, whether shamanism represents something real or is merely a mental construction of academics or Westerners. Empirical research resolves this question by establishing a cross-cultural distribution of remarkably similar spiritual healers that correspond to Eliade's conceptualizations of the shaman (Winkelman 1992). ...
... This cross-cultural research (Winkelman 1992) helps clarify two different concepts of shamanism in Eliade's work that have contributed to confusion regarding the distinguishing characteristics of shamans. Eliade's most general characterization of the shaman as someone who enters ecstasy is true of shamans, but all societies have practitioners who ritually alter their consciousness so as to engage with the spirits for healing and divination. ...
... Mediums are another type of religious practitioner identified cross-culturally that is typified by experiences of possession (Winkelman 1992; see also Lewis [1971Lewis [ ] 2003Sered 1994). Mediums are typically female and are found in complex societies with agricultural subsistence and hierarchical political integration. ...
Shamanism and possession are central concepts in the religious practices of many “premodern” societies, with substantial similarities manifested across cultures and time that reflect their basis in human nature. Shamans and possession both involve ritual alteration of consciousness but differences between them are illustrated by cross‐cultural studies and the distinctive experiential features associated with their respective activities. Shamans' characteristic alterations of consciousness involve soul flight, what modern psychology recognizes as out‐of‐body experiences that involve a separation of one's visual perspectives from self and body. Possession episodes differ in the experience of control by spirits and amnesia of the event, reflecting psychosocial features that produce dissociation. Shamanism and possession nonetheless share biological features in their elicitation of ancient brain systems to modify the consciousness in relation to healing and spiritual experiences.
... concept, that is to say, whether shamanism represents something real or is a construction of academics or Westerners without a basis in reality. There has been, however, empirical research that establishes a cross-cultural distribution of remarkably similar spiritual healers that correspond to Eliade's conceptualizations of shamanism (Winkelman 1992). ...
... These societal predictors of shamanism maintain their significance with statistical controls for the possibility of diffusion, indicating an independent causation of this phenomenon in different societies rather than the spread (diffusion) of the practices. These findings that shamanism is not predicted by a diffusion model indicate that the distribution of shamanism worldwide reflects independent origins derived from human nature (Winkelman 1992). ...
... Shamans are distinguished from other magico-religious healers (mediums, healers, and shaman/healers) found in more complex societies (Winkelman 1992). Shamans are a social universal, found worldwide in foraging societies and slightly more complex semi-nomadic horticultural and pastoral societies. ...
... Eliade emphasized shamanism as "preeminently" of Siberia, but he recognized similar practices around the world. Dissension concerning whether shamanism was strictly limited to Siberia or was found worldwide has been resolved through crosscultural research by Michael Winkelman (1986Winkelman ( , 1990Winkelman ( , 1992 that illustrates empirically the existence of similar magicoreligious practitioners in many hunter-gatherer and simple agricultural and pastoral societies. Michael Harner refers to this worldwide phenomenon as "core shamanism." ...
A brief overview of research supporting Eliade's idea of a cross-cultural concept of the shaman based on systematic ethnological (holocultural) data analysis.
Here we build on the concepts presented in Chap. 2 to provide operationally derived definitions for key terms and to present a general analytic framework for studying the structure of spirits. We suggest that each culture has its own (more-or-less) logically coherent framework that organizes and categorizes spirits and spirit-related objects (e.g., charms) into the larger cultural framework (which we call local knowledge) that organizes its understanding of the world. Linguistic anthropologists developed a methodology called ethnosemantics for exploring such cultural precepts. Although originally applied to linguistic data, we suggest this approach can be used to reconstruct a culture’s conceptual organization and worldview using additional sources of information. Often spirits are central to a culture’s worldview and therefore this method is useful in understanding how people designate and define souls, ghosts, demons, ancestors, and so forth. Related to the classification of spirits is the classification of spirit specialists such as shamans, priests, and mediums. These and other specialists interact with spirits, but their relationships with the various types of spirits defined within a culture varies among and even with cultures. We illustrate both the utility of the ethnosemantics-inspired approach and provide examples of cultural variation. Cases studies include Napoleon Chagnon’s study of Yanomamö hekura spirits, A. Irving Hallowell’s analysis of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe), Matt Tomlinson’s analysis of Fijian veli and yalo, and Kirsten Endres’s analysis of the cooperation among Vietnamese mediums, priests, and soul callers. We end the chapter by emphasizing that the ethnosemantics approach is flexible enough to allow us to “embrace the ambiguity” inherent in the cultural variation in spirits while also providing the analytic framework to allow cross-cultural variation.
Here we provide an extended discussion of the core conceptual background and the methodological structure we employ in the subsequent chapters. We start with a brief discussion of anthropology as a discipline, and then outline a chronological summary of anthropological approaches that have been used to understand spirits. This discussion includes early researchers such as Sir Edward Tylor, Franz Boas, Bronislaw Malinoswski, Sir James Frazer as well as more recent approaches focused on the use of psychedelics, evaluations of the mental health of shamans and other spirit specialists, the prevalence and importance of spirit possession, and advances in brain neurology during the late-twentieth entury and early-twenty-first century. We also introduce the hyperactive agent detection hypothesis that suggests humans believe in spirits/animistic agency because of an overly sensitive adaptive mechanism in our brains to identify predators. The topics presented in this summary will be touched on during the rest of the book (e.g., the concepts of animism, magic, and spirit possession). We then present our own theoretical and methodological approach for understanding spirits. Building from the work of Karl Hempel and other philosophers of science, we explain the underlying issue to the scientific study of spirits is focusing on them as unobservable entities and avoiding questions such as, “Are spirits real?”. We suggest in contrast that anthropologists study the empirically observable aspects of spirit-human interaction and use operational definitions of categories such as spirits, shamans, and related terms. Our approach allows anthropologists to step back from unanswerable questions related to belief and “the objective reality of spirits” and instead focus on what spirits do in specific cultural contexts. This will provide the empirical basis for scientific cross-cultural comparisons.
Este artículo presenta el problema de la multitud y variedad de creencias y narrativas del centro de México asociadas con los seres que toman forma de una bola de fuego voladora. Aunque con frecuencia se les denomina “brujas” y adscribe comportamientos extremadamente antisociales, entre los indígenas nahuahablantes de una región del Estado de Veracruz a este tipo de personajes se les considera como defensores de la comunidad y guardianes de tesoros. Un análisis microcomparativo de los datos obtenidos por mi trabajo de campo y fuentes antropológicos provenientes de varias regiones del centro de México revela que el enredado complejo de las creencias y narrativas asociadas a las bolas de fuego voladoras incluye tanto sus funciones antisociales como prosociales. [The Protective Witches. A Microcomparative Study of Antisocial and Prosocial Features of the Entities-Flying Balls of Fire According to Beliefs and Narratives from Central Mexico. This article presents the issue of multiplicity and variety of beliefs and narratives on flying balls of fire form Central Mexico. Although these beings are frequently referred to as “witches” and considered extremely antisocial, in a region located in the Veracruz State these beings are seen as protectors of the people and guardians of treasures. A microcomparative analysis of the data from my fieldwork and an-thropological sources associated with other regions of Central Mexico reveals that the tangled complex of beliefs and narratives associated with flying balls of fire encompasses just as much their prosocial and antisocial functions.]
A. Irving Hallowell, in his classic article, “Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View”, offered a guiding principle for the adequate and accurate description of the social lives, world views, and cultures of non-Western peoples. The principle establishes the fundamental place of a people’s own concepts of personhood and, more generally, being, in cultural description and analysis. According to Hallowell
The origin and end of Scioto Hopewell culture and lifeways have puzzled archaeologists for decades. This uncertainty exists in part because, until very recently, the details of organization and operation of Scioto Hopewellian social and ceremonial life and the outlines of Scioto Hopewellian spiritual thought have not been known. How Scioto Hopewellian social and ceremonial life emerged and disappeared could not be adequately addressed when it was unclear what they were specifically and what factors might thus have caused them. Uncertainly also exists because, in this lacuna in knowledge about the inner workings of Hopewellian life, archaeologists have been forced to look for possible causes of it that were external rather than internal to it; and no reasonably convincing external causes have been found.
Ethyl alcohol (Alcohol aethylicus, C2H5OH) has been used since the dawn of history in various beverages and, much later in the history of mankind, as a pure fluid substance, for nonmedical, pseudomedical, and medical purposes. At one time it was considered an important remedy for all diseases: the word “whisky” is believed to have its roots in the Gaelic usquebough, meaning “water of life” (Ritchie, 1977). It is now recognized that the therapeutic value of alcohol is limited to its local external use; however, the social use of alcoholic beverages leading eventually to alcohol dependence and concurrent chronic intoxication, as well as frequently occurring cases of acute intoxication, calls for detailed knowledge of its pharmacology and toxicology.