Shamanism Essay -- Spirit Shaman Shamanism Essays

shamanismTo truly understand the meaning of priest-doctorism one must uncover the original definition. The word shaman comes from the lyric of the Evenk, a small Tungus-speaking group of hunters and reindeer herders from Siberia. It was first used only to designate a religious specialist from this region. By the beginning of the twentieth century it was already being applied to a variety of newton America and South American practices from the present and the past. Today people bemuse gone as far as defining the word shaman as whatsoever human that ac accreditledges that he/she has had contact with spiritual entities. intimately at least the term still refers to human beings.The Siberian shamans spirit is said to be able to leave the body and travel to opposite single outs of the cosmos, cut officularly to an upper world in the sky and a lower world underground. How can anyone know what the people of Mesoamerica were seeing if they in fact were evening in these states of t rance. A broader definition is that shamans would accommodate any kind of person who is in control of his or her state of trance, even if this does non involve a soul journey. This broader definition stills does not include a culture that no one was around to document. Does anyone really know if these shamans controlled their state of trance? Not to mention, there is no evidence of a written language of either the Olmec or West Mexican regions to date. These definitions of shamanism are very brief and really can not be upheld as a specific precise and accurate definition, however shamanism within these parameters has been astray accepted both in the early and new-fangled twentieth century, and into today.Shamanism due to its many definitions could be just rough any being that can be observed practicing. Shamanism is not a single, unified religion but a cross-cultural gain of religious sensibility and practice. It is a complex set of practices, beliefs, values and behaviors tha t change the practitioner to elect a shift from ordinary consciousness into a trance state with a specific goal in mind. such(prenominal) as healing, obtaining information, power, vision, divination, contacting the spirit of the deceased, soul retrieval or guidance for chasten action. Shamanism is scattered and fragmented and should perhaps not be called an -ism at all. There is no doctrine, no world shamanic church, no holy bear as a point of reference, no priests with... ...ght to be a part of some religions. Some have in all discredited the theory of Shamanism as a way of coping out in research. To completely convince readers of a theory, there should be a firm founding to their argument and there is not one when it comes to shamanism in superannuated Mesoamerican cultures such as the Olmec and West Mexican cultures. (Hamayon, 1-5) The word shamanism has been thrown around a great deal these days, and attached to a variety of behaviors, sometimes with only a vague understa nding of its meaning. closely people who study the existence of shamans have very little noesis of what actual tribal shamans practiced in any given culture. A researcher or interested seeker, looking through all the widely varied literature, will notice both similarities and differences between anthropological descriptions of old tribal shamans and similar iconography of Mesoamerica. Similarities could mean that there were rituals of a similar order but it does not prove that they are all a part of a giant web that stretches across the world. Confusion on the melodic theme and its many interpretations cloud its origin and force a compromising status on the very word shamanism.