Shamanism—Medicine Men and Priests

90:2.1Spirit con­jur­ing was a very pre­cise and highly com­pli­cated pro­ce­dure, com­pa­ra­ble to pres­ent-day church rit­u­als con­ducted in an an­cient tongue. The hu­man race very early sought for super­hu­man help, for rev­e­la­tion; and men be­lieved that the shaman ac­tu­ally re­ceived such rev­e­la­tions. While the shamans uti­lized the great power of sug­ges­tion in their work, it was al­most in­vari­ably neg­a­tive sug­ges­tion; only in very re­cent times has the tech­nique of pos­i­tive sug­ges­tion been em­ployed. In the early de­vel­op­ment of their pro­fes­sion the shamans be­gan to spe­cial­ize in such vo­ca­tions as rain mak­ing, dis­ease heal­ing, and crime de­tect­ing. To heal dis­eases was not, how­ever, the chief func­tion of a shamanic med­i­cine man; it was, rather, to know and to con­trol the haz­ards of liv­ing.

90:2.2An­cient black art, both re­li­gious and sec­u­lar, was called white art when prac­ticed by ei­ther priests, seers, shamans, or med­i­cine men. The prac­ti­tion­ers of the black art were called sor­cer­ers, ma­gi­cians, wiz­ards, witches, en­chanters, nec­ro­man­cers, con­jur­ers, and sooth­say­ers. As time passed, all such pur­ported con­tact with the super­nat­u­ral was clas­si­fied ei­ther as witch­craft or shaman­craft.

90:2.3Witch­craft em­braced the magic per­formed by ear­lier, ir­reg­u­lar, and un­rec­og­nized spir­its; shaman­craft had to do with mir­a­cles per­formed by reg­u­lar spir­its and rec­og­nized gods of the tribe. In later times the witch be­came as­so­ci­ated with the devil, and thus was the stage set for the many com­par­a­tively re­cent ex­hi­bi­tions of re­li­gious in­tol­er­ance. Witch­craft was a re­li­gion with many prim­i­tive tribes.

90:2.4The shamans were great be­liev­ers in the mis­sion of chance as rev­e­la­tory of the will of the spir­its; they fre­quently cast lots to ar­rive at de­ci­sions. Mod­ern sur­vivals of this pro­cliv­ity for cast­ing lots are il­lus­trated, not only in the many games of chance, but also in the well-known “count­ing-out” rhymes. Once, the per­son counted out must die; now, he is only it in some child­ish game. That which was se­ri­ous busi­ness to prim­i­tive man has sur­vived as a di­ver­sion of the mod­ern child.

90:2.5The med­i­cine men put great trust in signs and omens, such as, “When you hear the sound of a rustling in the tops of the mul­berry trees, then shall you be­stir your­self.” Very early in the his­tory of the race the shamans turned their at­ten­tion to the stars. Prim­i­tive as­trol­ogy was a world-wide be­lief and prac­tice; dream in­ter­pret­ing also be­came wide­spread. All this was soon fol­lowed by the ap­pear­ance of those tem­per­a­men­tal shamanesses who pro­fessed to be able to com­mu­ni­cate with the spir­its of the dead.

90:2.6Though of an­cient ori­gin, the rain mak­ers, or weather shamans, have per­sisted right on down through the ages. A se­vere drought meant death to the early agri­cul­tur­ists; weather con­trol was the ob­ject of much an­cient magic. Civ­i­lized man still makes the weather the com­mon topic of con­ver­sa­tion. The olden peo­ples all be­lieved in the power of the shaman as a rain maker, but it was cus­tom­ary to kill him when he failed, un­less he could of­fer a plau­si­ble ex­cuse to ac­count for the fail­ure.

90:2.7Again and again did the Cae­sars ban­ish the as­trologers, but they in­vari­ably re­turned be­cause of the pop­u­lar be­lief in their pow­ers. They could not be driven out, and even in the six­teenth cen­tury af­ter Christ the di­rec­tors of Oc­ci­den­tal church and state were the pa­trons of as­trol­ogy. Thou­sands of sup­pos­edly in­tel­li­gent peo­ple still be­lieve that one may be born un­der the dom­i­na­tion of a lucky or an un­lucky star; that the jux­ta­po­si­tion of the heav­enly bod­ies de­ter­mines the out­come of var­i­ous ter­res­trial ad­ven­tures. For­tunetellers are still pa­tron­ized by the cred­u­lous.

90:2.8The Greeks be­lieved in the ef­fi­cacy of orac­u­lar ad­vice, the Chi­nese used magic as pro­tec­tion against demons, shaman­ism flour­ished in In­dia, and it still openly per­sists in cen­tral Asia. It is an only re­cently aban­doned prac­tice through­out much of the world.

90:2.9Ever and anon, true proph­ets and teach­ers arose to de­nounce and ex­pose shaman­ism. Even the van­ish­ing red man had such a prophet within the past hun­dred years, the Shawnee Ten­skwatawa, who pre­dicted the eclipse of the sun in 1806 and de­nounced the vices of the white man. Many true teach­ers have ap­peared among the var­i­ous tribes and races all through the long ages of evo­lu­tion­ary his­tory. And they will ever con­tinue to ap­pear to chal­lenge the shamans or priests of any age who op­pose gen­eral ed­u­ca­tion and at­tempt to thwart sci­en­tific prog­ress.

90:2.10In many ways and by de­vi­ous meth­ods the olden shamans es­tab­lished their rep­u­ta­tions as voices of God and cus­to­di­ans of prov­i­dence. They sprin­kled the new­born with wa­ter and con­ferred names upon them; they cir­cum­cised the males. They pre­sided over all burial cer­e­monies and made due an­nounce­ment of the safe ar­rival of the dead in spir­it­land.

90:2.11The shamanic priests and med­i­cine men of­ten be­came very wealthy through the ac­cre­tion of their var­i­ous fees which were os­ten­si­bly of­fer­ings to the spir­its. Not in­fre­quently a shaman would ac­cu­mu­late prac­ti­cally all the ma­te­rial wealth of his tribe. Upon the death of a wealthy man it was cus­tom­ary to di­vide his prop­erty equally with the shaman and some pub­lic en­ter­prise or char­ity. This prac­tice still ob­tains in some parts of Ti­bet, where one half the male pop­u­la­tion be­longs to this class of non­pro­duc­ers.

90:2.12The shamans dressed well and usu­ally had a num­ber of wives; they were the orig­i­nal aris­toc­racy, be­ing ex­empt from all tribal re­stric­tions. They were very of­ten of low-grade mind and morals. They sup­pressed their ri­vals by de­nom­i­nat­ing them witches or sor­cer­ers and very fre­quently rose to such po­si­tions of in­flu­ence and power that they were able to dom­i­nate the chiefs or kings.

90:2.13Prim­i­tive man re­garded the shaman as a nec­es­sary evil; he feared him but did not love him. Early man re­spected knowl­edge; he hon­ored and re­warded wis­dom. The shaman was mostly fraud, but the ven­er­a­tion for shaman­ism well il­lus­trates the pre­mium put upon wis­dom in the evo­lu­tion of the race.