Shamans; Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination

Ronald Hutton is an amazing scholar. He’s also a lot of fun!

In this book, he examines the written records of Siberian shamanism. While he reviews the contradictions and omissions in scholarly studies, he also offers a tour of Siberia. And when else are we going to learn anything about that region and its people?

Everyone “knows” that the term shamanism originates in Siberia and that the phenomenon occurs in many other parts of the world. The term shamanism, which could have made sense of diverse spiritual practices, has created confusion. The term did not originate in Siberia and anthropologists disagree as to which “magical” practices in various parts of the world constitute shamanism.

The numerous tribes of people in Siberia have different languages, ethnic backgrounds, and cultures. And yet the most common term for shaman is kam; the word shaman is rare. In fact, that word may ultimately be descended from the Pali term for Buddhist monk, samana or shamana, since Buddhism did spread to parts of Siberia and affect cultures there. (Another question arises: did Buddhism bring Tibetan Bon-po practices, which have shamanic elements, to Siberia?)

Scholars have not agreed on a definition of shamanism. Hutton lists four different definitions that are currently floating around academic institutions. “A set of words and concepts which might so usefully have transcended national and disciplinary boundaries has been productive instead of so much confusion and incoherence.”

It is uncertain whether shamanism is a prehistoric practice preserved in some societies or if it spread from one region to certain others and blended with other traditions. Why are there no shamans in Africa, the birthplace of modern humans? Why is so-called shamanism more common in South America if it originated in Siberia? If it was a pre-historic practice, it should be more common in African hunting-gathering societies, than among Siberian pastoralists.

Few accounts of shamanism written prior to Russian incursions into Siberia exist. Later reports were made by Russians seeking to catalog the resources of the Russian empire. By that time, native cultures had been altered by contact with Russian imperialism.

Russians and, later, Soviets bent on subjugating and “civilizing” native peoples were fascinated by the primitive, superstitious, and magical practices of the “shamans.” Depending on the era, they felt that organized religion or rational science were superior to traditional ways.

There is no one Siberian people in that vast region which covers at least three different geographical regions. Each region once contained numerous ethnic groups. Russians lumped many of them together based on language. (Based on Russian imperialist definitions of the various groups, the Soviet Union could deny that it had exterminated six “Siberian” tribes, since speakers of those languages still existed.)

(Interestingly, shamanism was more common in societies that recognized land ownership because those societies venerated nature spirits and ancestors. Buddhism prevailed in societies that did not recognize land ownership and that had weak kinship ties.)  

There were many kinds of leaders and spiritual practitioners in each of the various Siberian tribes, but only a few of those people were labeled shamans by outside observers.

The people that scholars called shamans, were often marginal figures in the social and religious life of their tribes. Other figures lead rites, chose seasonal camping grounds, lead hunting parties, healed the sick, assisted the dying to travel to the next world, or performed sacrifices. In some groups, "shamans" were prohibited from attending major ceremonies.

Smiths, herbalists, singers, and diviners, among others, had higher prestige than those people labeled shamans by westerners. (Hutton seems to view Russians as westerners, which in this case they probably were.) Members of these societies only turned to the shaman after other “magical” specialists had failed to help them.

All the various specialists used altered states of consciousness and spiritual contacts. Shamans did not rely on just those two techniques; they also herbs, sacrifices, and prayer to help people who turned to them.

Shamans did depend on spirit guides that took animal form. Natural features such as mountains were stable and powerful; smaller spirits, controllable by the shamans, and able to travel different terrains, were needed for his or her work. (Close to half of all shamans were women, but they were less respected than male shamans.) In some cases, the shaman’s spiritual double did the work, taking animal form to seek the missing soul of a patient.

Those people labeled shamans did have one thing in common: showmanship. They were performers who engaged the participation of their audience. Both they and their audience entered altered states of consciousness.

The primary creator of western scholarly notions of shamanism was Mirce Eliade, world-renowned scholar of religions (and raving anti-Semite). Hutton concludes that Eliade ignored some facts and twisted others, selecting a few, apparently similar phenomena to support his theory that shamanism had once been a worldwide practice:

He was imposing an ideal type on a very diverse and complex set of phenomena… it was both an inversion of the modern western experience of religion and of the modern western tradition of rationalism. All these qualities gave it a considerable romantic appeal… The identification of the Siberian shaman as the archetype of the primitive worker of magic, opposed to western norms of religion, was as old as the first European contacts with shamans.

  

After many chapters of scholarly objectivity, Hutton reaches a conclusion based partly on the experiences of real people, friends and acquaintances, who have encountered spirits and rely on the guidance of those spirits to help or heal others.

Ronald Hutton

Piers Vitebsky seems to be correct, therefore, in suggesting that the traits which underpin Siberian shamanism occur naturally in individuals throughout humanity, although they are given different cultural expression at particular times and places. In Siberia, during recorded history, they were expressed in an unusually spectacular and socially esteemed manner. In early modern Europe they could be given a public role only with some difficulty and danger, and in the modern world they can hardly be expressed at all. The fact that western scholars have had to go to the far end of Eurasia to find a term for something apparently inherent in humanity may be directly related to this lack of recognition, as is the confusing breadth of phenomena to which it is now applied. At the heart of the modern scholarly fascination with what is called shamanism, and confusion over it, lies an unease caused by a willful failure of comprehension.

(Why does he say it is a willful failure?)

Some native Siberians are reviving shamanism, while others question the authenticity of the new shamanic groups. An American named Michael Harner has created a school of neo-shamanism based on what he calls Core Shamanism, practices he claims are common to many tribal societies. Although Hutton concludes that shamanistic experiences can happen to humans in any culture, he doesn’t agree with Harner’s assertion that there is a single underlying basis for all shamanic practices. The characteristics of Core Shamanism are not found in every tribal society. Some of the practices of Core Shamanism derived from Native American cultures were not exclusive to medicine men, but were experienced by most of a tribe’s young men. Core shamanism’s “self-justifying concept of shamanism as a worldwide and ancient phenomenon is very much the vision provided by Eliade.”

Hutton concludes that shamanic techniques may be of therapeutic benefit to many people, but the scholarly study of shamanism is currently imprecise, confusing, and of little academic value.