shamanismsupernatural. A shaman’s status is not determined by knowledge of rit-
ual, but rather his/her authority is based upon personal charisma.
A shaman treats two types of illness: an intrusion into a patient’s body
of a spirit or an object, and soul loss. In the first type of case, the object
that causes the disease is often transmitted by a spirit or an evil person,
such as a sorcerer or witch. Even though there are no obvious changes in
the patient’s consciousness, the afflicted person suffers from external
injuries or internal pains. In order to cure a patient, the shaman must
remove the object, initially determining the object’s location and its
nature, and then extract it by sucking it out, blowing it away, or massag-
ing it away. In cases of soul loss, the patient’s soul may leave the body
freely or by the force of evil spirits, who carry it away. Either type of
scenario calls for the shaman to retrieve the loss soul, a condition that
renders the afflicted delirious and unconsciousness, and return it to the
body of the patient and restore that person to health. In order for the sha-
man to journey to the land of the dead to retrieve a patient’s soul, he/she
enters into an ecstatic trance state, and releases his/her soul from the
body, which crosses over to the invisible world. Then, the shaman’s
objective is to establish contact with the patient’s soul, to retrieve it, and
to replace it into the body of the sufferer, which cures the patient.
There are three primary ways in which shamans are recruited: sponta-
neous vocation in the form of a call or election to the position, by hered-
itary transmission of the profession, and by personal quest. The last type
is generally considered less powerful because the shaman is self-made.
In central and northern Asia, once the shaman is recruited he/she must be
initiated, a process that involves torture and violent dismemberment of
the body, scraping away of flesh until reduced to a skeleton, and substitu-
tion of internal organs and renewal of his/her blood. After this initiatory
procedure, the shaman descends to the underworld to be educated by the
souls of former deceased shamans and demons, and then ascends to
heaven to gain consecration from the divine powers.
Besides the ability to enter into ecstatic trance states, the shaman
possesses the ability to see spirits and contact souls of the dead, which
presupposes dying in order to encounter these souls. A shaman may also
have helping guardian spirits, who are divine beings peculiar to the sha-
man and are unknown to the rest of the community. These guardian spir-
its often assume animal form, and only the shaman offers them sacrifice.
It is possible for others to know that these animal spirits are present
because the shaman imitates animal cries or behavior. In addition, the
shaman possesses a secret language that often represents an animal lan-
guage, which can be learned from a teacher or by means of the shaman’s
own efforts. Knowing such a language enables the shaman to know the