Shamanism—Medicine Men and Priests

90:3.1Since an­cient man re­garded him­self and his ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ment as be­ing di­rectly re­spon­sive to the whims of the ghosts and the fan­cies of the spir­its, it is not strange that his re­li­gion should have been so ex­clu­sively con­cerned with ma­te­rial af­fairs. Mod­ern man at­tacks his ma­te­rial prob­lems di­rectly; he rec­og­nizes that mat­ter is re­spon­sive to the in­tel­li­gent ma­nip­u­la­tion of mind. Prim­i­tive man like­wise de­sired to mod­ify and even to con­trol the life and en­er­gies of the phys­i­cal do­mains; and since his lim­ited com­pre­hen­sion of the cos­mos led him to the be­lief that ghosts, spir­its, and gods were per­son­ally and im­me­di­ately con­cerned with the de­tailed con­trol of life and mat­ter, he log­i­cally di­rected his ef­forts to win­ning the fa­vor and sup­port of these super­hu­man agen­cies.

90:3.2Viewed in this light, much of the in­ex­pli­ca­ble and ir­ra­tional in the an­cient cults is un­der­stand­able. The cer­e­monies of the cult were prim­i­tive man’s at­tempt to con­trol the ma­te­rial world in which he found him­self. And many of his ef­forts were di­rected to the end of pro­long­ing life and in­sur­ing health. Since all dis­eases and death it­self were orig­i­nally re­garded as spirit phe­nom­ena, it was in­ev­i­ta­ble that the shamans, while func­tion­ing as med­i­cine men and priests, should also have la­bored as doc­tors and sur­geons.

90:3.3The prim­i­tive mind may be hand­i­capped by lack of facts, but it is for all that log­i­cal. When thought­ful men ob­serve dis­ease and death, they set about to de­ter­mine the causes of these vis­i­ta­tions, and in ac­cor­dance with their un­der­stand­ing, the shamans and the sci­en­tists have pro­pounded the fol­low­ing the­o­ries of af­flic­tion:

90:3.41. Ghosts—di­rect spirit in­flu­ences. The ear­li­est hy­poth­e­sis ad­vanced in ex­pla­na­tion of dis­ease and death was that spir­its caused dis­ease by en­tic­ing the soul out of the body; if it failed to re­turn, death en­sued. The an­cients so feared the malev­o­lent ac­tion of dis­ease-pro­duc­ing ghosts that ail­ing in­di­vid­u­als would of­ten be de­serted with­out even food or wa­ter. Re­gard­less of the er­ro­neous ba­sis for these be­liefs, they did ef­fec­tively iso­late af­flicted in­di­vid­u­als and pre­vent the spread of con­ta­gious dis­ease.

90:3.52. Vi­o­lence—ob­vi­ous causes. The causes for some ac­ci­dents and deaths were so easy to iden­tify that they were early re­moved from the cat­e­gory of ghost ac­tion. Fa­tal­i­ties and wounds at­ten­dant upon war, an­i­mal com­bat, and other read­ily iden­ti­fi­able agen­cies were con­sid­ered as nat­u­ral oc­cur­rences. But it was long be­lieved that the spir­its were still re­spon­si­ble for de­layed heal­ing or for the in­fec­tion of wounds of even “nat­u­ral” cau­sa­tion. If no ob­serv­able nat­u­ral agent could be dis­cov­ered, the spirit ghosts were still held re­spon­si­ble for dis­ease and death.

90:3.6To­day, in Africa and else­where may be found prim­i­tive peo­ples who kill some­one ev­ery time a non­vi­o­lent death oc­curs. Their med­i­cine men in­di­cate the guilty par­ties. If a mother dies in child­birth, the child is im­me­di­ately stran­gled—a life for a life.

90:3.73. Magic—the in­flu­ence of en­e­mies. Much sick­ness was thought to be caused by be­witch­ment, the ac­tion of the evil eye and the magic point­ing bow. At one time it was re­ally dan­ger­ous to point a fin­ger at any­one; it is still re­garded as ill-man­nered to point. In cases of ob­scure dis­ease and death the an­cients would hold a for­mal in­quest, dis­sect the body, and set­tle upon some find­ing as the cause of death; oth­er­wise the death would be laid to witch­craft, thus ne­ces­si­tat­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of the witch re­spon­si­ble there­for. These an­cient coro­ner’s in­quests saved many a sup­posed witch’s life. Among some it was be­lieved that a tribesman could die as a re­sult of his own witch­craft, in which event no one was ac­cused.

90:3.84. Sin—pun­ish­ment for taboo vi­o­la­tion. In com­par­a­tively re­cent times it has been be­lieved that sick­ness is a pun­ish­ment for sin, per­sonal or racial. Among peo­ples travers­ing this level of evo­lu­tion the pre­vail­ing the­ory is that one can­not be af­flicted un­less one has vi­o­lated a taboo. To re­gard sick­ness and suf­fer­ing as “ar­rows of the Al­mighty within them” is typ­i­cal of such be­liefs. The Chi­nese and Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans long re­garded dis­ease as the re­sult of the ac­tion of evil demons, al­though the Chaldeans also looked upon the stars as the cause of suf­fer­ing. This the­ory of dis­ease as a con­se­quence of di­vine wrath is still preva­lent among many re­put­edly civ­i­lized groups of Uran­tians.

90:3.95. Nat­u­ral cau­sa­tion. Man­kind has been very slow to learn the ma­te­rial se­crets of the in­ter­re­la­tion­ship of cause and ef­fect in the phys­i­cal do­mains of en­ergy, mat­ter, and life. The an­cient Greeks, hav­ing pre­served the tra­di­tions of Adam­son’s teach­ings, were among the first to rec­og­nize that all dis­ease is the re­sult of nat­u­ral causes. Slowly and cer­tainly the un­fold­ing of a sci­en­tific era is de­stroy­ing man’s age-old the­o­ries of sick­ness and death. Fever was one of the first hu­man ail­ments to be re­moved from the cat­e­gory of super­nat­u­ral dis­or­ders, and pro­gres­sively the era of sci­ence has bro­ken the fet­ters of ig­no­rance which so long im­pris­oned the hu­man mind. An un­der­stand­ing of old age and con­ta­gion is grad­u­ally oblit­er­at­ing man’s fear of ghosts, spir­its, and gods as the per­sonal per­pe­tra­tors of hu­man mis­ery and mor­tal suf­fer­ing.

90:3.10Evo­lu­tion unerringly achieves its end: It im­bues man with that su­per­sti­tious fear of the un­known and dread of the un­seen which is the scaf­fold­ing for the God con­cept. And hav­ing wit­nessed the birth of an ad­vanced com­pre­hen­sion of De­ity, through the co-or­di­nate ac­tion of rev­e­la­tion, this same tech­nique of evo­lu­tion then unerringly sets in mo­tion those forces of thought which will in­ex­orably oblit­er­ate the scaf­fold­ing, which has served its pur­pose.