Siberian Shamanism Research Articles

Philosophers, poets, and witches

There are some metaphors used already in many ancient traditions on the ground of which the concepts of philosopher, poet, and witch, or wizard, can be compared. Two of them are shortly dicussed here. The first is the metaphor of “seeing’: ancient Greek philosophers, as also ancient Indian sages, speak of their occupation as consisting in the capacity of mental sight; poets from earliest times call themselves seers; many nouns for witch and wizard in different languages derive from the verbs meaning ‘to see’. The second metaphor discussed here is ‘flying’: ancient Greek philosophers, as also ancient Indian seers, speak of their mental flights; poets do fly and confess of having wings from the times immemorial until nowadays; and some of Lithuanian witches were accused of having flown and the bird’s feathers found in their hairs were considered as an evidence for that (not to speak of the well-known feathers in the garment of Siberian shamans, American Indian cheafs and wizards, etc.). It seems, then, that philosophers, poets and witches, or wizards, represent one and the same mental, religious, and cultural phenomenon the different conception and interpretation of which depends primarily on the conscious awareness of a methaphor.

The History of Lapland and the Case of the Sami Noaidi Drum Figures Reversed

The Sami are the indigenous peoples of northern Scandinavia and the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Up until the periods between the 17th and 18th centuries the Sami practiced an indigenous form of shamanism, characterised by hunting and animal cer- emonialism. After the crusade against the Sami and the practice of their an- cient nature religion by the Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish priests and mis- sionary workers, a subsequent number of Noaidi-Shaman drums were collected and in time exhibited in different museums throughout Europe, where many still remain today. The Noaidi drums have been vital sources of information for scholars out- side Sami culture, as well as the Sami themselves. In the 1670s, Johannes Schefferus, the German scholar and linguist wrote about the history of Lapland which was translated into Latin under the uniform title Lapponia. English, French and Dutch editions soon followed as did a German edition. This article discusses some of the implications for researchers due to a number of signifi- cant errors recently identified in these original manuscripts and furthermore, what this means for the Sami history, religion and culture today? In the winter of 2002, I travelled to Finland to undertake studies in Circumpolar and sub-Arctic animism and shamanism, as an exchange student at the Uni- versity of Helsinki, and a student of comparative religion. This was under the auspices of Juha Pentikainen, professor of comparative religion, whom I had met in the fall of 2001 when he was visiting Bath Spa University in the UK, to present a series of lectures about Sami and Siberian shamanism, where I was a first year student, studying religious studies and European history. Soon after the arrival in Helsinki, an invitation arrived concerning a con- ference on Finno-Ugric Shamanism about the minority peoples of Siberia. The title of this event was From Taiga to Tundra, and was to be held at the Mu- seum of Cultures in Helsinki, organised by Institute for Cultural Research, Department of Finno-Ugric Studies in University of Helsinki, and the M. A

Sibirya Şamanizminde Doğa Tapınımı

During the last 30-40 years, animism, comparative theologians Has escaped his attention. Nevertheless, animism is still both in the world and in the world Located as a very important concept in the shamanism of the Northern Siberian peoples . In this article, the individual types of the soul concept Against the situation in the past and the Siberian shaman today Animistic design will be revealed. In addition, the shamanic spirit helpers A great deal of attention has been given to the different types and styles of straw Will be shown. What kind of symbols and what kind of roles do they play in these representations? The answer to this question is that the North Siberian shamanism Will lead us to understand. Besides, the Siberian shaman is dead Shrubs, horses, mountain ash and animal ritual rituals gets. As a result, the Siberian animism's deep meaning or message It can be said that there is a balance between human and nature.

Ritual objects from a neolithic site at the Elgen river mouth and their relevance in prehistoric, eastern Siberian shamanism

Ritual objects from a neolithic site at the Elgen river mouth and their relevance in prehistoric, eastern Siberian shamanism

The developmental/emergent model of archetype, its implications and its application to shamanism

This paper addresses the ongoing debate in the JAP to do with archetype theory and supports an emergent/developmental model which sees archetypal imagery as an emergent phenomenon arising out of neural bio-structures laid down in early infant life as a result of developmental experience. This model is supported by the current findings of those developmental biologists who adhere to Developmental Systems Theory. The themes of Developmental Systems Theory are examined and corroborative parallels are drawn with the model. A number of implications follows: the model has substantial explanatory power and leads to a new perspective on innatism; it implies an archetype-environment nexus; it collapses the nature-nurture debate in relation to archetype theory; it collapses the 'sacred heritage' approach to archetypes and it removes the conceptual division between the collective and personal unconscious. This developmental/emergent perspective is then applied to the shaman archetype, using ethnographic records of the Sakha (Yakut) Siberian tribe. The material supports the hypothesis that the shamanic complex is laid down in early infancy by a combination of events which cause emotional ruptures in the mother-infant dyad. Siberian shamanism is then understood to arise out of developmental experience and not from the constellation of an autochthonous archetype.

The Siberian Journeys and Legacy of Vilmos Diószegi

Vilmos Dioszegi was led to a study of Siberian shamanism by research into the pre-conquest, archaic stratum of Hungarian folk belief and folk customs, the still unsolved mystery of Hungarian ethnogenesis. He made three research trips in Southern Siberia (1957, 1958, 1964), and one in Northern Mongolia (1960). Shamanism was a taboo subject for Soviet-Russian researchers in the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, and Siberia was closed to foreign researchers. He pressed on and carried out his planned fieldwork, always supplementing his fieldwork with research in local museums, libraries and datafiles, establishing professional, scholarly and human contacts which were to serve him well later when he edited his international volumes of studies, and created and continuously expanded the Shaman Archive. The scholarly legacy of Vilmos Dioszegi, the Shaman Archive, after his death did not remain intact. Vilmos Dioszegi's manuscripts, books, photographs and sound recordings are now officially preserved in four places...

Wu and shaman

Since Shangdai de shenhua yu wushu, Chen Mengjia's article on Shang mythology, some sinological works have proposed that the Chinese wu was an equivalent of the Siberian shaman. I examine first the issues in anthropological comparatism involved in this problem and provide up-to-date information on Siberian shamanism. It must be noted that the Chinese texts are by no means equivalent to modern anthropological data and that these texts did not originate directly from the wu themselves; they are rather a collection of opinions or stories on the wu. Detailed study of the nature and social status of the Chinese wu, either in oracular inscriptions or late Zhou received texts, shows a systematic association of the wu with non-auspicious or negative events, like funerals, death or natural catastrophes. A further analysis of the data reveals that the wu's activities in relation to natural phenomena were frequently presented in terms related to sexuality. This last point permits a comparison with Siberian shamans, whose activities are also linked to fecundity and sexuality, although the Chinese texts often associate the wu with sexual misbehaviour and blame them on moral grounds. They go as far as to treat them as dangerous sorcerers who must be weeded out. According to these data, the wu's social function is linked to the handling of misfortune, either directly or by being associated with ritually unacceptable behaviours. On the whole, my conclusion is that even the common point between wu and Siberian shaman (the link with sexuality) is not sufficient to allow for a translation of ‘wu’ by ‘shaman’, especially in view of the differences of social and historical context.

Healing Failed Faith? Contemporary Siberian Shamanism

The agony of public and private changes in Russia (the Federation of Rossiia) has extended to indigenous peoples of Siberia. Focus on the Sakha Republic Yakutia) of the Far East enables analysis of diverse social, political, and spiritual transformations. Initial 1990s euphoria at the possibility of personal and community reform has yielded to confusion and soul searching. In such conditions, shamanic revitalization has become both popular and controversial in rural and urban contexts. Diverse shamanic activities and styles reveal a fragmentation of tradition. While disillusion with failed faith healers is rife, several nascent shamanic movements have attracted eclectic groups of followers. The two shamanic leaders featured here are attempting philosophical, social, and ecological reforms. Their movements and reputations transcend the personal healing of multicultural clients.This article, inspired by the writing and example of Edith Turner, draws attention to the interrelationship between individual and community healing. Data, based on frequent fieldwork in the Far East since 1986, help augment and critique literature on revitalization movements, shamanism, gender, and nationalism.

Mannequins and Spirits: Representation and Resistance of Siberian Shamans

In the early 20th century anthropologists collected sounds, images and artifacts to represent traditional cultures. Under the direction of Franz Boas, anthropologists working for the American Museum of Natural History's JesupNorth Pacific Expedition documented a variety of northeastern Siberian shamanisms. Demonstrations staged for the phonograph and the camera served as models for museum representations. These ethnographic inscriptions, together with the collection of texts and sacred objects, documented shamanistic traditions; yet ceremonial traditions remained partially obscured, resisting full intelligibility. The complexity of variations suggests that mystification and opacity are central to shamanic efficacy and the continued vitality of performative ritual, and that Siberian shamanic practices are inherently resistant to anthropological modes of interpretation.

Metal in the Works of Vasilii Aksenov

Why has the search for a Soviet cultural mythology become so attractive to scholars East and West? The reasons are complex, and some have more to do with academic politics than with real advances in understanding. Nevertheless, much of Soviet reality-as constructed by both leadership and people-is better interpreted in terms of a shared cultural landscape of myths and symbols, than it is in terms of ideological systems. While Marxist ideology is unmatched for the scope of its rationalist worldview, the lacuna in its historical narrative are too conspicuous to be ignored even by ardent supporters. Leaps of faith across causal gaps demand a shift (whether conscious or unconscious) from logical exposition to a more poetic idiom. The prime example of such a gap is the one separating political and cultural revolution. When Marxism attempts to envision the actual course of events by which changes in economic conditions will lead to a change in human nature, it must resort to metaphor. Thus, the creation of the New Soviet Man is described in terms that evoke mythic archetypes: initiation, death and rebirth, apotheosis. The history of one especially prominent narrative of transformation be traced back for millennia. One finds it in Mexican creation myths, in the initiation rituals of Siberian shamans, in the religious folklore of medieval Europe, in the doctrines of both Occidental and Oriental alchemy, and throughout the symbolic lexicon of modern revolutionary movements. This is the myth of spiritual transubstantiation through metallization. Its archetypal motifs are as follows: a given metal, on the basis of its physical characteristics and the peculiarities of its extraction, is identified with the supernatural realm (or even with the flesh and bones of some divine being). Through the mediation of supernatural forces, mortal human bodies be treated by the methods used in the production of this metal, resulting in their union with the sacred element and their acquisition of its positive characteristics. The forging and tempering of human beings is a variant of the motif of initiation through ritual death and rebirth-and, in particular, that of purification by fire. Metal symbolism has thus been associated from primordial times with the universal revolutionary symbols of fire and light. Another factor explaining its attraction for the Russian revolutionaries stems from more recent history, and the split of the communists into hard Bolsheviks and soft Mensheviks, as manifested in pseudonyms such as those of Kamenev (kamen', stone), Molotov (molot, hammer), and-of course-Stalin (stal steel). Iron and steel provide the commonest epithets for the political firmness of Lenin's followers.2 The post-revolutionary economic role of these metals is reflected in their enhanced symbolic function, particularly with regard to the sacred triad of labour/warfare/suffering. Stalin's declaration that the Soviet Union can and must become a country of metal3 presumes the existence of a nation of ironjawed cadres ready to execute such a cataclysmic task. While traces of the flesh-to-metal narrative are present on every level of Soviet culture, it is, like any Bolshevik myth, rarely encountered in its explicit form. The great attraction of Marxism is its alleged scientific insight into the history and future of hitherto unanalyzable social phenomena. All that is reasonable in the human mind... will necessarily become reality, declares Plekhanov.4 This faith in the power of reason demands that Marxist ideology suppress any irrational elements, not excepting its own ruling myth-that of dialectical materialism as the antidote to all myths. Yet Marxism cannot survive without its myths and symbols, and its history is the ongoing record of their suppression and resurgence. The metallization of the body as a metaphor for the creation of the communist New Man has undergone several cycles of automatization and realization in the course of the twentieth century. …

The Monarch and the Mystic: Catherine the Great's Strategy of Audience Enlightenment in The Siberian Shaman

The author of these words wrote them after the 1786 stage premieres of two of her plays; although the playwright may have ostensibly remained anonymous to the audience at the St. Petersburg Hermitage Theatre, where both plays debuted, most of those present knew that this was no ordinary writer and no ordinary spectacle. The plays were by none other than the Empress Ekaterina II-Catherine the Great. And although she assumed the mask of anonymity, Catherine's role-playing on this evening was every bit as playfully deceptive as when, one night in 1763, she cross-dressed as a man and spent the evening flirtatiously courting a young woman at a court ball (Maroger 358-59).2 Given that the stage can be a potent means of shaping and reinforcing social values, the monarch-playwright is in a particularly powerful role. Catherine took advantage of this dual positioning by writing over two dozen plays and opera libretti. Her anti-Masonic trilogy, consisting of The Deceiver [Obmanshchik], The Deceived One [Obol'shchennyi], and The Siberian Shaman [Shaman Sibirskii], was one of her weapons against Masonic orders and mysticism-along with more direct preventive measures such as censorship and imprisonment. This article will provide a detailed analysis of the last play of the trilogy to be written and performed, The Siberian Shaman. That script presents a contradictory interpretation of shamanism, for although Catherine most often shows her title character to be fraudulent and laughable, he sometimes appears to be credible and

Le Chant d'Ixcozauhqui, hymne sacré des anciens Mexicains

Attempt at an interpretation of an ancient sacred Mexican Hymn : The Ixcozauhqui's Song The analysis of an ancient sacred Mexican Hymn dedicated to Ixcozauhqui, the God of Fire, has allowed us to learn three major lessons. First of all, this Song belongs to one of the main liturgical points of a religious feast called "Izcalli". Then, we have noticed that many common features between the Soothsayer interceding during this feast and the Siberian Shamans. Finally, we have been able to verify that the beliefs in use in Mexico City were shared by other populations living on the Meso-American territory, especially the Mayas, thus testifying to the reality and liveliness of a genuine cultural common heritage in this wide area.

Flights of the Sacred

Apres la repression sovietique, les chamans et les guerisseurs repondent a des aspirations spirituelles renouvelees, a la democratisation de la religion et a un nationalisme croissant chez les croyants. L'A. explore le symbolisme animal (surtout l'oiseau) dans les cosmologies chamaniques et dans des contextes sociopolitiques specifiques. A l'aide des voix des Sakha siberiens (les Yakoutes), il etablit des comparaisons avec d'autres populations et examine les theories sur le chamanisme

Siberian shamanism and improvised music

Mysticism appears in music either as musical content or as an intervention into the process of music-making. This article discusses the latter in terms of the experience of the improvising musicians Tim Hodgkinson and Ken Hyder. During their search for a method of improvising without predetermined structural constraints they began to look at the state of mind of performers, and this led them to investigate shamanism. They began to use a ritual preparation for performance. Travelling to Siberia and meeting shamans, they tried to discover the basis of the fluctuating tempi typical of shamanic music. Forced to abandon preconceptions about shamanic performance being like Western artistic performance, they were led to understand shamanic music as a negotiation between voluntary and involuntary aspects of cognition. The most important element they as Westerners were able to draw from shamanic culture was the very close connection made between the natural environment — considered as sound-and the inner states of a person's being.

Hereditary transmission in Siberian Shamanism and the concept of the reality of legends

Belief in the hereditary transmission of shaman's gift is common to all Siberian shamanism. One can find corresponding motifs in Nganasan shamanism as well as in Tuvinian one. Often there is impossible to become a shaman without having shamans-ancestors in family. Sometimes they are namely the spirits of shamans-ancestors, who at first reveal themselves to the devotee and force him to shamanize. More frequently they are supernormal beings, who were in close relations with them - for instance former helping spirits of a shaman-ancestor. Gilyak researcher Taksami wrote: The boy named Koinyt, who's father - the shaman - died not long ago, fell asleep after noon and began suddenly to toss about and cry, repeating typical shouts of shamans. After waking he looked pale and tired. In dream he saw two spirits - a man and a woman, who said: Before we played with your father, now we would play with you. (Taksami 1981, 167) Belief in the hereditary transmission of shaman's gift was firm among several peoples in Siberia. For that very reason children in famous shaman families, who desired not to become shamans, fell ill and lived as mentally or physically diseased persons. For example Nikolai Agitshev, son of the famous Ostyak-Samoyedic shaman, who worked in 1930-is together with linguist G. Prokofyev. Last years of his life Nikolai spent in loneliness, made wooden idols and fed them. (Prokofyeva 1981, 45-46) In the present paper we attempt to explain some aspects of the belief in the hereditary transmission of shaman's talent. Associating the shaman trance with a hypnotic state, we proceed from the definition and general causes of origin of an altered state of consciousness as formulated by Arnold Ludwig (Ludwig 1968, 69) and the analysis of spirit possession given by Sheila Walker. latter shows, elaborating on Merton Gill's and Margaret Brenman's psychoanalytical approach to hypnosis (Gill, Brenman 1961), that hypnosis and possession represent different forms of the same phenomenon - regression in the service of the ego (Walker 1972, 26-51). Together with Walker, we can say, that in many cultures the hypnotists need not to be a person. external pressure that influences the individual and his own conscious and subconscious motives, based on different religious ideas, create a subsystem of the ego, which is the supernatural being that possesses an individual. After that, we shall come from psychoanalysis to psychology and try to explain the process of origin of the shaman's sickness, relying on the notion of the generalized realityorientation borrowed from Roland Shor. He termed so a structured frame of reference that characterizes a normal state of consciousness and supports, interprets and gives meaning to all the experience of an individual. (Shor 1959, 585) Shor stated that hypnosis is a complex of two processes, one of which is the construction of a special, temporary orientation and the other is the relative fading of the generalized reality-orientation into non-functional unawareness. (A.-L. Siikala's resume of theses of Shor - Siikala 1978, 50) To mark the temporary orientation that enables possession (or, more narrowly, the shaman's sickness), we are using the term reality of legends. This is a system which springs from religious images transmitted by tradition and which arises onto generalized reality-orientation in some cases of altered state of consciousness. Applying it, we state that the shaman's sickness common among the Siberian peoples represents an acute manifestation of the shaman's world induced by an activation of the reality of legends and caused by any event or provocation that can be interpreted appropriately. novice is possessed not only by one particular supernatural being but the whole world beyond with its inhabitants. Although familiar

Render Unto Caesar: The Religious Sphere in World Politics

Topics include the relationship of religious values to political stability, democratic political development, and the resocialization of the country. The contributors also examine the role of religious symbols as a legitimizing force. Geographically, Render unto Caesar is limited to Eurasia, but religions discussed include Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto, Protestantism, Judaism, Orthodox Christianity, Confucianism, African ancestor worship, Siberian Shamanism, Inca Religion, and Korean folk religion. Contributors include Samuel P. Huntington, Roger Friedland and Richard Hecht, Doug Edwards, Jo Ann McNamara, Hanna Kassis, Dauril Alden, Willfried Spohn, Cynthia Ann Humes, Michael J. Ziemann, James Felak, William C. Fletcher, Clark Sorensen, Stephen Denney, and Gene Webb.

The Siberian Shaman's Dress (excerpt)

The Siberian Shaman's Dress (excerpt)

Jimmy on East 15th Street

When, early December of 1987, the news came of Jimmy s death France at the age of 63, I went down to the basement with a handful of keys and on the third or fourth try opened a footlocker and dug out a musty black report binder labeled, white ink, POEMS - JAMES BALDWIN. Below the name, there is a popeyed caricature affixed with brittle, yellowed cellophane tape. Inside, on loose sheets, there are a couple of poems first draft, but the punched and bound contents of the binder are the carbon copies of poems - Nursery Rhyme, Wastrel Song, Lament, Breakfast with Apollo, Three A.M., Song for a Laughing Boy, and others, all with the name and address the upper left-hand corner: James Baldwin, 348 East 15th Street, New York City 3, NY. On the backs of the pages are taped the rejection slips, from Dwight Macdonald's Politics, from Tomorrow Magazine, from Kerker Quinn at Accent, from Contemporary Poetry and The Virginia Quarterly Review and Partisan Review, from The Sewanee Review and The Winged Word. The tape's stickum has darkened and soaked through the paper, forming discolored bars on the overleaf text, as if someone were highlighting lines (For my brain is horror and my body, wrath) with a nasty, burnt-umber marker. On a plain 3 x 5 slip is the word Sorry, signed Alan Swallow, for NMQR. And PBR of The Kenyon Review writes, This is interesting work - especially 'Breakfast with Apollo.' But we think we'd rather wait till you work yourself freer of the Eliot influence to find a mode of your own. Written my hand, not much changed well over four decades, are the dates: Submitted to Kenyon Review 3/4/45, rej. 3/30/45, and so on. But one poem that went to Politics was mailed on the 4th and came whipping back on the 8th. Editors were faster back those days, but even then such speed seemed excessive to the point of insult. It depressed us. However, PBR was right one respect: The predominant influence was Eliot. Jimmy was the habit of carrying Four Quartets around his pocket, a habit that cost him one of the long list of jobs he found and lost with astonishing alacrity during that winter and spring of 1944-45. Those months qualify as part of the desperate years the Village (as Jimmy later characterized them), the years that immediately preceded his flight to Paris November of 1948. That is, they qualify by falling within that five-year period. But for a time late winter and early spring he was on East 15th Street, and it was a time more of work and of hope than of desperation. Off and on, for more than five years, I've been thinking of that time. I was 22, going on 23, a graduate of UC-Berkeley, and I had come to New York because my grade-point average and a paper on Siberian shamans had won me a scholarship to the New School's Graduate Faculty of Social and Political Science, where, Professor Kroeber back Berkeley had assured me, I would fit in better. What he meant was that Berkeley's Department of Anthropology would not welcome my application to stay on as a graduate student. I had already exhibited a tendency to stir things up and, sensing my troublemaker potential, they preferred to have me 3,000 miles away. Berkeley was not then what it became over two decades later; even my habit of wearing slacks and striped t-shirts to class was a mark against me. I was strictly a West Coast girl and had never been farther east than Denver, but I went and found myself dumped out of a taxi the middle of the street front of my destination, a run-down hotel near Madison Square Garden where lived the one person I knew all of Manhattan. Within weeks I had joined the Young People's Socialist League and was getting up before dawn to take the train to Far Rockaway with a comrade named Milton Zatinsky, our mission being to stand the snow at the gates of an upholstery factory and hand out leaflets designed to arouse class consciousness a work force made up of totally bourgeois and only semi-conscious young women. …

Stakes of the Game: Life and Death in Siberian Shamanism

Most of the images evoked by the term shamanism are derived from the soul's field of experience. These images run the gamut of possibilities, from a disconcerting exoticism to the most intimate familiarity. Sometimes the shaman's role is limited to that of pathetic hero, struggling in solitude against hostile nature; sometimes he becomes the rudimentary model of the mystic or even of the psychiatrist of contemporary societies. These images, however, without being completely false, wrongly reduce the shamanic phenomenon to the shaman's personality and limit his field of action to the individual psyche. This limitation hardly does justice to the realities of shamanistic societies. What is missing in the shaman-centered view is the collective's slumbering velleity of itself entering into shamanic experience. Each cure becomes an occasion for collective renewal and joy. The shaman's activities in séance, it is believed, are an expression of the direct contact he has established with the spirits and of his power over them; his duties are the realization of a ritual act carried out at the behest of the community.

Ritual and Folklore in Siberian Shamanism

In this section we shall discuss the relationships between rituals and folklore texts. We have shown that the syntagmatic structure of ritual arises or may arise apart from direct reliance on a folkloric plot, as a realization of communicative relationships of varying dimension.a Does this mean that the folkloric plot arises as a direct reflection of the ritual plot? The answer to this question will largely allow solution of a whole range of other problems confronting the ethnographer wishing to use folklore as a historical source, and the folklorist studying the principles of folklore plot formation.