was one of intense desire ... it was something quite different from
ordinary life ... something as they would say now, ‘in another
dimension’ (in Wilson, 2006:591).I ndeed, the shaman perceives a world of total aliveness, in all parts
personal, in all parts sentient and aware and responsive, in all parts capable of
being known and being used and so the shaman’s knowledge enables her or him to
serve as a bridge between ordinary reality and transpersonal realms. The shaman
experiences ecstatic altered states of consciousness and travels to non-ordinary
realities in order to divine and heal, to communicate with the spirits of the dead and
to perform other supernatural feats but primarily to bring about a heightened
awareness in their audience whether that is an individual or group. The perception
of such phenomena has also been the basis of an argument that suggests it is a
form of schizophrenia (Kalweit, 1987:210-211, 218). The obligatory shamanic
initiation, involving suffering and revelation and which may involve bilocation and
audiovoyance, would be seen as a clinical manifestation of disease rather than an
altered or heightened state of consciousness; albeit, that it is a state experienced by
all of the participants cited in this research.
The word ‘shaman’ has very specific origins being derived from the Tungus-
Mongul noun saman, which means ‘one who knows’ (Hancock, 2005:173). The
term ‘shamanism’ entered Western languages as a result of early anthropological
reports and was applied to indigenous spiritual and religious systems in many
countries. Mircea Eliade in his 1964 seminal work, previously cited, synthesizes the
approaches of psychology, sociology and ethnology, and writes about various
shamanisms; Siberian, North American, South American, I ndonesian, Oceanian, and
African (Eliade, 1951:xi), and elsewhere documents shamanism among the
aboriginal tribes of Australia (Eliade, 1964:31,45,85,108), and identifies shamanic
symbolisms and techniques in I ndia, Tibet, China and the Far East (Eliade,
1964:424-465). Although shamanism is universal and primal and can be traced to
many ancient cultures, in some cases it has assumed the more sophisticated form of
an organized religion. Shamans flourished in both ancient Egypt and I srael and it
has been argued by some scholars that among the early Semites, that in their rites
of initiation, ecstatic frenzy and poetic mode of utterance, the Hebrew prophets of
the Old Testament were true shamans (Guillaume, 1938:243-259, and Rowley,
1963:4-5,14-15).