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English: The multifarious and sometimes contested concept of “shamanism” has aroused intense popular and scholarly interest since its initial coinage by the Russian scholar V. M. Mikhailovsky in the late 19th century. In this book, three leading scholars, representing different branches of the humanities, dwell on the current status of ...
Shamanism is a spiritual practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with the spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritual energies into the physical world for the purpose of healing, divination , or to aid human beings in some other way.
Shamanism is also practiced in a few rural areas in Japan proper. It is commonly believed that the Shinto religion is the result of the transformation of a shamanistic tradition into a religion. Forms of practice vary somewhat in the several Ryukyu islands, so that there is, for example, a distinct Miyako shamanism. [55]
In the introduction, Hutton notes that since the 1970s, four distinct definitions of "shamanism" have been adopted by anthropologists and scholars of religious studies. The first holds that shamanism refers to any practice in which an individual "contacts a spirit world while in an altered state of consciousness." The second reserves the term ...
Michael James Harner (April 27, 1929 – February 3, 2018) was an American anthropologist, educator and author. His 1980 book, The Way of the Shaman: a Guide to Power and Healing, [1] has been foundational in the development and popularization of core shamanism as a New Age path of personal development for adherents of neoshamanism. [2]
The first half of Shamanism deals with the various elements of shamanic practice, such as the nature of initiatory sickness and dreams, the method for obtaining shamanic powers, the role of shamanic initiation and the symbolism of the shaman's costume and drum. The book's second half looks at the development of shamanism in each region of the ...
Author Jan Fries regards seiðr as a form of "shamanic trembling", which he relates to "seething", used as a shamanic technique, the idea being his own and developed through experimentation. [26] According to Blain, seiðr is an intrinsic part of spiritual practice connecting practitioners to the wider cosmology in British Germanic neopaganism.
Neoshamanism comprises an eclectic range of beliefs and practices that involve attempts to attain altered states and communicate with a spirit world through drumming, rattling, dancing, chanting, music, or the use of entheogens, although the last is controversial among some neoshamanic practitioners.