Siberian Shamanism Research Articles

Behind shamanism: Changing voices of Siberian Khanty cosmology and politics

Siberian shamanism has roots in hunting traditions, kinship organization and soul beliefs which have changed under Soviet rule. Aspects of shamanic epistemology and curing survive, although native medical logic sometimes clashes with modern positivist medicine. Assumptions behind Siberian, particularly Khanty, shamanism are examined through analysis of training, seances and cosmology. The changing social context of shamanism is explored in a framework of Soviet pressure to reject shamanic ‘superstitution’ and ‘exploration’. Shamans themselves have adapted their politics, diagnoses and symbolic actions to an increasingly cold social climate. Data results from ethno-historical and field research, including a summer 1975 trip to the Ob-Ugrian Khanty (Ostiak).

Problems of Central Asian and Siberian Shamanism

Problems of Central Asian and Siberian Shamanism

Problems of Central Asian and Siberian Shamanism

Problems of Central Asian and Siberian Shamanism

The Siberian Shaman’s technique of ecstasy

Changes in the field of observation and body image, attenuated grasp of reality and self-control, which may lead to identification with authority in the case of the shaman with supranormal powers, are all identifying features of shamanic ecstasy. It also appears that some of the basic elements of the shamanic tradition can be explained on the basis of typical marks of identification of altered states of consciousness. A sense of depersonalization and transcendence may in itself act as an impetus to cosmic journey fantasies. Without doubt, such feelings are at the very heart of the tradition containing the schism between mind and body. Thus, by placing the shamanic technique of ecstasy beside parallel modes of behaviour, possibly of different cultural background, we discover the guide lines for analysing its basic psychophysical properties. When studying a phenomenon such as shamanism, where the method of inducing trance is marked by the occurrence of certain common features and whose culturally-bound meaning and social function are, broadly speaking, uniform, we may assume that despite individual variation the basic mechanism of the technique of ecstasy may be delineated. What, then, is the ideal process of the shamanic trance technique? What factors exert particular pressure on the behaviour of the shaman? Shamanic practice differ from other means of attaining ecstasy with its emphasis on the ritual role-taking technique aimed at the supranormal counter-roles, the "spirit-helpers". The shaman's generalized reality orientation is cut off by means of suitable ritual requisites, the extinguishing of the lights and the noise of intensified drumming. Its place is taken by special orientation, a world created by the shamanic tradition, fantasies of supranormal beings and their dwelling places. The shaman actualises one spirit role after another according to a set pattern.

The Rite Technique of the Siberian Shaman

The Rite Technique of the Siberian Shaman

Some strategies of non-physical aggression in other cultures.

IN Tim tribal world as in the industralised Western one, tensions and conflicts lead to the expression of aggression in many different, culturally controlled forms. Warfare, feud, and litigation are as much part and parcel of social life in small-scale tribal communities as they are in our own world. These exotic cultures, however, also display a wide range of mystical modes of attack, of non-physical aggression strategies which we have now largely discarded or relegated to the realm of morbid psychology. This communication deals with two such forms of mystical attack: spirit possession and witchcraft (or sorcery). As in our own pre-scientific tradition, in tribal cultures malevolent spirits and malice-ridden witches loom large in the aetiology of illness and misfortune, and are invoked to explain a range of afflictions which are by no means limited solely to psychosomatic maladies. Most people, I think, are well aware that a nexus of social conflict provides the typical setting in which accusations of witchcraft flourish. One has only to recall that celebrated case in our own history concerning the witches of Salem which has been so effectively dramatised by Arthur Miller in his play, The Crucible, with its subtle and sociologically apt allusions to the McCarthy anti-communist witch-hunts in America. That spirit-possession thrives in a similar, but not identical, tension-laden milieu is perhaps not so immediately obvious. Nevertheless, one of the best-established traditional procedures in the study of this phenomenon is that which stresses the conflict-torn personality of the spirit- possessed priest or shaman, who in one form or another, figures in all possession cults. Here the shaman who, in his own cultural setting, is believed to be able to control spirits and to apply them in divination and the treatment of the sick, is represented as a severely disturbed neurotic or psychotic. This view has a long tradition in Anthropology and has also been enthusiastically endorsed by a number of psychiatrists. Thus amongst recent writers, Devereux (1), in a spirited exposition of this approach rhetorically asks 'How could anyone's symptoms be more florid than those of the budding Siberian shaman?', and more recently Silverman (2), has produced a closely argued assimilation of the shaman's personality to that of the acute schizophrenic. Whatever the actual mental state of the shaman (of which more will be said later), this approach to the problem of spirit-possession is as one-sided as it is ethnocentric and even smacks a little of professional jealousy. It is like discussing Christianity in terms of psychotic symptoms in priests, or perhaps more aptly, of evaluating the whole of psychoanalysis in terms of the psychotic experiences of some analysts. Moreover, it is surely rather bizarre to discuss mental health problems exclusively in terms of the incidence of syndromes in the healers rather than in the patients. After

The Peoples of Siberia edited by M. G. Levin and L. P. Potapov. Chicago: University Press, 1964. 984 pp., 315 line and half-tone illustrations and 3 maps in text, folding map in end cover. $20. - Studies in Siberian Shamanism edited by H. N. Michael. Arctic Institute of North America, Anthropology of the North: Translations from Russian sources, No. 4.

The Peoples of Siberia edited by M. G. Levin and L. P. Potapov. Chicago: University Press, 1964. 984 pp., 315 line and half-tone illustrations and 3 maps in text, folding map in end cover. $20. - Studies in Siberian Shamanism edited by H. N. Michael. Arctic Institute of North America, Anthropology of the North: Translations from Russian sources, No. 4. Toronto: University Press, 1963. 229 pp., 49 half-tone and line illustrations in text. $3.25. - Volume 39 Issue 155