Shamanism—Medicine Men and Priests

90:0.1The evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious ob­ser­vances pro­gressed from pla­ca­tion, avoid­ance, ex­or­cism, co­er­cion, con­cil­i­a­tion, and pro­pi­ti­a­tion to sac­ri­fice, atone­ment, and re­demp­tion. The tech­nique of re­li­gious rit­ual passed from the forms of the prim­i­tive cult through fe­tishes to magic and mir­a­cles; and as rit­ual be­came more com­plex in re­sponse to man’s in­creas­ingly com­plex con­cept of the super­ma­te­rial realms, it was in­evitably dom­i­nated by med­i­cine men, shamans, and priests.

90:0.2In the ad­vanc­ing con­cepts of prim­i­tive man the spirit world was even­tu­ally re­garded as be­ing un­re­spon­sive to the or­di­nary mor­tal. Only the ex­cep­tional among hu­mans could catch the ear of the gods; only the ex­traor­di­nary man or woman would be heard by the spir­its. Re­li­gion thus en­ters upon a new phase, a stage wherein it grad­u­ally be­comes sec­ond­handed; al­ways does a med­i­cine man, a shaman, or a priest in­ter­vene be­tween the re­li­gion­ist and the ob­ject of wor­ship. And to­day most Uran­tia sys­tems of or­ga­nized re­li­gious be­lief are pass­ing through this level of evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment.

90:0.3Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion is born of a sim­ple and all-pow­er­ful fear, the fear which surges through the hu­man mind when con­fronted with the un­known, the in­ex­pli­ca­ble, and the in­com­pre­hen­si­ble. Re­li­gion even­tu­ally achieves the pro­foundly sim­ple re­al­iza­tion of an all-pow­er­ful love, the love which sweeps ir­re­sistibly through the hu­man soul when awak­ened to the con­cep­tion of the lim­it­less af­fec­tion of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther for the sons of the uni­verse. But in be­tween the be­gin­ning and the con­sum­ma­tion of re­li­gious evo­lu­tion, there in­ter­vene the long ages of the shamans, who pre­sume to stand be­tween man and God as in­ter­me­di­aries, in­ter­preters, and in­ter­ces­sors.