shamans

70:6.6Un­scrupu­lous rulers gained great power by the dis­cov­ery of poi­son. Early court magic was di­a­bol­i­cal; the king’s en­e­mies soon died. But even the most despotic tyrant was sub­ject to some re­stric­tions; he was at least re­strained by the ever-pres­ent fear of as­sas­si­na­tion. The med­i­cine men, witch doc­tors, and priests have al­ways been a pow­er­ful check on the kings. Sub­se­quently, the landown­ers, the aris­toc­racy, ex­erted a re­strain­ing in­flu­ence. And ever and anon the clans and tribes would sim­ply rise up and over­throw their despots and tyrants. De­posed rulers, when sen­tenced to death, were of­ten given the op­tion of com­mit­ting sui­cide, which gave ori­gin to the an­cient so­cial vogue of sui­cide in cer­tain cir­cum­stances.

90:1.3While they may have prac­ticed de­cep­tion in mi­nor mat­ters, the great ma­jor­ity of the shamans be­lieved in the fact of their spirit pos­ses­sion. Women who were able to throw them­selves into a trance or a catalep­tic fit be­came pow­er­ful shamanesses; later, such women be­came proph­ets and spirit medi­ums. Their catalep­tic trances usu­ally in­volved al­leged com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the ghosts of the dead. Many fe­male shamans were also pro­fes­sional dancers.

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.

150:3.119. The prac­tices of the en­chanters, the wiz­ards, the ma­gi­cians, and the sor­cer­ers, were de­rived from the su­per­sti­tions of the Egyp­tians, the As­syr­i­ans, the Baby­lo­ni­ans, and the an­cient Ca­naan­ites. Amulets and all sorts of in­can­ta­tions are fu­tile ei­ther to win the pro­tec­tion of good spir­its or to ward off sup­posed evil spir­its.

89:1.2The re­spect which these pro­hi­bi­tions com­manded in the mind of the sav­age ex­actly equaled his fear of the pow­ers who were sup­posed to en­force them. Taboos first arose be­cause of chance ex­pe­ri­ence with ill luck; later they were pro­posed by chiefs and shamans—fe­tish men who were thought to be di­rected by a spirit ghost, even by a god. The fear of spirit ret­ri­bu­tion is so great in the mind of a prim­i­tive that he some­times dies of fright when he has vi­o­lated a taboo, and this dra­matic episode enor­mously strength­ens the hold of the taboo on the minds of the sur­vivors.

70:10.5It was very early be­lieved that ghosts ad­min­is­tered jus­tice through the med­i­cine men and priests; this con­sti­tuted these or­ders the first crime de­tec­tors and of­fi­cers of the law. Their early meth­ods of de­tect­ing crime con­sisted in con­duct­ing or­deals of poi­son, fire, and pain. These sav­age or­deals were noth­ing more than crude tech­niques of ar­bi­tra­tion; they did not nec­es­sar­ily set­tle a dis­pute justly. For ex­am­ple: When poi­son was ad­min­is­tered, if the ac­cused vom­ited, he was in­no­cent.

69:3.53. Dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion based on re­li­gion. The med­i­cine men were the first hu­man be­ings to be ex­empted from phys­i­cal toil; they were the pi­o­neer pro­fes­sional class. The smiths were a small group who com­peted with the med­i­cine men as ma­gi­cians. Their skill in work­ing with met­als made the peo­ple afraid of them. The “white smiths” and the “black smiths” gave ori­gin to the early be­liefs in white and black magic. And this be­lief later be­came in­volved in the su­per­sti­tion of good and bad ghosts, good and bad spir­its.

88:1.9Hunch­backed and crip­pled chil­dren were re­garded as fe­tishes; lu­natics were be­lieved to be moon-struck. Prim­i­tive man could not dis­tin­guish be­tween ge­nius and in­san­ity; id­iots were ei­ther beaten to death or revered as fe­tish per­son­al­i­ties. Hys­te­ria in­creas­ingly con­firmed the pop­u­lar be­lief in witch­craft; epilep­tics of­ten were priests and med­i­cine men. Drunk­en­ness was looked upon as a form of spirit pos­ses­sion; when a sav­age went on a spree, he put a leaf in his hair for the pur­pose of dis­avow­ing re­spon­si­bil­ity for his acts. Poi­sons and in­tox­i­cants be­came fe­tishes; they were deemed to be pos­sessed.

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.

90:0.3Evo­lu­tion­ary 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.

90:1.1The shaman was the rank­ing med­i­cine man, the cer­e­mo­nial fetish­man, and the fo­cus per­son­al­ity for all the prac­tices of evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion. In many groups the shaman out­ranked the war chief, mark­ing the be­gin­ning of the church dom­i­na­tion of the state. The shaman some­times func­tioned as a priest and even as a priest-king. Some of the later tribes had both the ear­lier shaman-med­i­cine men (seers) and the later ap­pear­ing shaman-priests. And in many cases the of­fice of shaman be­came hered­i­tary.

88:1.10Many peo­ple looked upon ge­niuses as fe­tish per­son­al­i­ties pos­sessed by a wise spirit. And these tal­ented hu­mans soon learned to re­sort to fraud and trick­ery for the ad­vance­ment of their self­ish in­ter­ests. A fe­tish man was thought to be more than hu­man; he was di­vine, even in­fal­li­ble. Thus did chiefs, kings, priests, proph­ets, and church rulers even­tu­ally wield great power and ex­er­cise un­bounded au­thor­ity.

90:1.4But not all shamans were self-de­ceived; many were shrewd and able trick­sters. As the pro­fes­sion de­vel­oped, a novice was re­quired to serve an ap­pren­tice­ship of ten years of hard­ship and self-de­nial to qual­ify as a med­i­cine man. The shamans de­vel­oped a pro­fes­sional mode of dress and af­fected a mys­te­ri­ous con­duct. They fre­quently em­ployed drugs to in­duce cer­tain phys­i­cal states which would im­press and mys­tify the tribes­men. Sleight-of-hand feats were re­garded as super­nat­u­ral by the com­mon folk, and ven­tril­o­quism was first used by shrewd priests. Many of the olden shamans un­wit­tingly stum­bled onto hyp­no­tism; oth­ers in­duced au­to­hyp­no­sis by pro­longed star­ing at their navels.

90:1.5While many re­sorted to these tricks and de­cep­tions, their rep­u­ta­tion as a class, af­ter all, stood on ap­par­ent achieve­ment. When a shaman failed in his un­der­tak­ings, if he could not ad­vance a plau­si­ble al­ibi, he was ei­ther de­moted or killed. Thus the hon­est shamans early per­ished; only the shrewd ac­tors sur­vived.

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.

70:5.8Some early com­mu­ni­ties were ruled by med­i­cine men, who of­ten acted as chiefs. One man would act as priest, physi­cian, and chief ex­ec­u­tive. Quite of­ten the early royal in­signias had orig­i­nally been the sym­bols or em­blems of priestly dress.

69:3.9The early spe­cial­ists in in­dus­try were the flint flak­ers and stone ma­sons; next came the smiths. Sub­se­quently group spe­cial­iza­tion de­vel­oped; whole fam­i­lies and clans ded­i­cated them­selves to cer­tain sorts of la­bor. The ori­gin of one of the ear­li­est castes of priests, apart from the tribal med­i­cine men, was due to the su­per­sti­tious ex­al­ta­tion of a fam­ily of ex­pert sword­mak­ers.

92:3.7But while call­ing at­ten­tion to the fact that re­li­gion was es­sen­tial to the de­vel­op­ment and preser­va­tion of civ­i­liza­tion, it should be re­corded that nat­u­ral re­li­gion has also done much to crip­ple and hand­i­cap the very civ­i­liza­tion which it oth­er­wise fos­tered and main­tained. Re­li­gion has ham­pered in­dus­trial ac­tiv­i­ties and eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment; it has been waste­ful of la­bor and has squan­dered cap­i­tal; it has not al­ways been help­ful to the fam­ily; it has not ad­e­quately fos­tered peace and good will; it has some­times ne­glected ed­u­ca­tion and re­tarded sci­ence; it has un­duly im­pov­er­ished life for the pre­tended en­rich­ment of death. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion, hu­man re­li­gion, has in­deed been guilty of all these and many more mis­takes, er­rors, and blun­ders; nev­er­the­less, it did main­tain cul­tural ethics, civ­i­lized moral­ity, and so­cial co­her­ence, and made it pos­si­ble for later re­vealed re­li­gion to com­pen­sate for these many evo­lu­tion­ary short­com­ings.

92:3.8Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion has been man’s most ex­pen­sive but in­com­pa­ra­bly ef­fec­tive in­sti­tu­tion. Hu­man re­li­gion can be jus­ti­fied only in the light of evo­lu­tion­ary civ­i­liza­tion. If man were not the as­cen­dant prod­uct of an­i­mal evo­lu­tion, then would such a course of re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment stand with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

92:3.9Re­li­gion fa­cil­i­tated the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of cap­i­tal; it fos­tered work of cer­tain kinds; the leisure of the priests pro­moted art and knowl­edge; the race, in the end, gained much as a re­sult of all these early er­rors in eth­i­cal tech­nique. The shamans, hon­est and dis­hon­est, were ter­ri­bly ex­pen­sive, but they were worth all they cost. The learned pro­fes­sions and sci­ence it­self emerged from the par­a­sit­i­cal priest­hoods. Re­li­gion fos­tered civ­i­liza­tion and pro­vided so­ci­etal con­ti­nu­ity; it has been the moral po­lice force of all time. Re­li­gion pro­vided that hu­man dis­ci­pline and self-con­trol which made wis­dom pos­si­ble. Re­li­gion is the ef­fi­cient scourge of evo­lu­tion which ruth­lessly drives in­do­lent and suf­fer­ing hu­man­ity from its nat­u­ral state of in­tel­lec­tual in­er­tia for­ward and up­ward to the higher lev­els of rea­son and wis­dom.

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.

88:6.1Magic was prac­ticed through the use of wands, “med­i­cine” rit­ual, and in­can­ta­tions, and it was cus­tom­ary for the prac­ti­tioner to work un­clothed. Women out­num­bered the men among prim­i­tive ma­gi­cians. In magic, “med­i­cine” means mys­tery, not treat­ment. The sav­age never doc­tored him­self; he never used medicines ex­cept on the ad­vice of the spe­cial­ists in magic. And the voodoo doc­tors of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury are typ­i­cal of the ma­gi­cians of old.

69:6.5It was a sin to ex­tin­guish a flame; if a hut caught fire, it was al­lowed to burn. The fires of the tem­ples and shrines were sa­cred and were never per­mit­ted to go out ex­cept that it was the cus­tom to kin­dle new flames an­nu­ally or af­ter some calamity. Women were se­lected as priests be­cause they were cus­to­di­ans of the home fires.