Search Results (6)

One of the basic features of shamanic rituals cross-culturally in East and Southeast Asia is that the ritual itself is structured as a journey up to the sky, climbing the world mountain or the world tree, or else a journey down to the bottom of the sea and back again. The shamanic retinue is understood to make this journey in person, rather than, as in Daoist ritual, sending divine emissaries up to the highest heavens. The journey is conducted through narrative song and dance, accompanied by strings of bells and lutes. The point of departure is the physical village or village household where the ritual is being conducted, and the journey progresses through a series of well-marked way stations via the temple of the earth god to the higher hills and finally to the villages and markets in the sky, before crossing the heavenly seas and ascending the highest mountain. On the way, demons and other impediments are encountered. The route and way stations vary depending on the purpose of the ritual and the intended divine recipient of offerings and submissions. The present article will explore the route up to the sky and the way stations in more detail, taking a single ritual type as performed by the Pụt and Then ritual practitioners as an example. The Pụt and Then are literate ritual specialists found among the Tày and Nùng peoples in northern Vietnam and southern China, near an area which is known to have been a centre of Brahmanical and Buddhist learning from very early times. Full article

Âşıks, renowned for their adeptness at improvisational poetry, are viewed as the inheritors of certain shamanic functions within historical contexts. Originally, shamans assumed diverse roles encompassing poetry, medicine, and priesthood before social and religious transformations prompted a gradual shift of the poetic responsibilities, first to individuals termed ozan (bards) and later to âşık, beginning from the 15th to 16th centuries. Âşıks share parallels with shamans in their upbringing, developmental stages toward âşıklık (bardhood), and esteemed societal positions. Their reverence for deceased masters becomes evident in their artistic presentations, wherein they express homage to the memories, and consequently the spirits, of their masters by reciting the works of esteemed âşık masters, notably Köroğlu, during their performances. This practice, referred to as “usta malı söylemek” (the performance of the masters’ poems and folk songs) within the Turkish âşık tradition, represents an endeavor to establish a connection with the spirits of ancestors. The resemblance between the tradition of âşıks evolving within the master–apprentice dynamic and shamans invoking the spirits of departed ancestors, embarking on celestial and subterranean journeys empowered by them, and the âşıks’ homage to their masters’ spirits through recitations of their works, thereby sensing their masters’ influence by engaging with them, is striking. This study explores the extent to which contemporary âşıks consciously embrace this resemblance. To this end, a sample group of 34 âşıks residing in diverse regions of Türkiye was interviewed, and the acquired data were analyzed using the document analysis method. Accordingly, all the âşıks who participated in the study were nurtured within the tradition of the master–apprentice relationship akin to shamans. They diligently sought to evoke the spirits of their masters during their performances by reciting masters’ poems and songs, reminiscent of shamans invoking the spirits of deceased shaman ancestors through prayers resembling divine verses. Furthermore, while variations specific to different regions and age groups existed among these âşıks, it was observed that consciously reciting the poems of their masters elevated the masters’ spirits. Simultaneously, they harbored concerns about the potential harm that neglecting this practice might inflict upon the tradition, themselves, and their surroundings. Full article

The Miao (Hmong) community in Southwest China, deeply entrenched in a religious belief system acknowledging the omnipresent spiritual essence and venerating ancestor worship, perceives life as a harmonious blend of the “soul” and the “body”, intricately interwoven and mutually reinforcing. Within this cultural milieu, shamanism and healing practices form an inseparable nexus, epitomizing a worldview characterized by the harmonious coexistence of gods, spirits, ancestors, ghosts, and shamans. This study scrutinizes the syncretism employed by the Miao to address illness, bridging shamanic practices and scientific treatments with religion, ritual, and local knowledge. Through methodologies such as autoethnography, participant observation, and in-depth interviews, the research explores a Miao woman’s healing journey, synthesizing shamanic traditions with scientific interventions to reveal the nuanced interplay between traditional customs, environmental influences, and health beliefs. Despite encountering challenges like limited healthcare access and high costs, numerous Miao people seek assistance from shamans, underscoring the community’s resilience in navigating the intricate interrelationship between traditional practices and modern healthcare systems. By emphasizing the significance of syncretism, this study contributes to a nuanced understanding of how the Miao seamlessly integrate shamanic practices with scientific treatments, fostering improved intercultural communication and cultivating culturally sensitive healthcare practices, ultimately enhancing the overall well-being of the Miao community. Full article

Medio Period (AD 1200 to 1450) Casas Grandes shamans used tobacco and possibly other entheogens to initiate trance states that allowed their spirits to travel across the cosmos. These trance experiences involved a sense of vertigo and soul flight that is cross-culturally common and occurs with tobacco-based nicotine intoxication. The Medio Period shamans also relied on and interacted with other-than-human persons during their travels, including macaw- and serpent-linked deities, as well as animated objects designed to participate in their shamanic journeys. The animated objects included Playas Red and Chihuahuan Polychrome pottery effigies of humans, macaws, and snakes with shamanic themes that represented the spirit world. I propose these pots were animate “pot-people” created for shamanic rituals. They were created with unusual designs including painted images and incised patterns that emphasized the spinning/vertigo that was central to the shamans’ soul flight experience. In some cases, the pots were literally spun, as evidenced by the distinctive wear patterns on their bases. The shamanic designs on the pots that reflected the upper and lower worlds, the depiction of spinning in the pottery decorations, and the literal spinning of some pots reflected the sympathetic and mimetic magic that linked them to the spirit world. They were imbued with the liminal nature of the creatures they depicted, and the symbolic and occasional literal emphasis on spinning would allow them to enter into a shamanic trance in a manner similar to their human counterparts. They, thus, were designed to enter into ASC in a manner that paralleled their human counterparts. Full article

Then is the designation in Vietnamese and Tày given to shamanic practitioners of the Tày ethnicity, who reside mainly in the northern provinces of Vietnam. Scholars are long aware that the predominantly female spirit mediums among the Zhuang in Guangxi, variously called mehmoed or mehgimq, had a ritual repertoire which included shamanic journeys up to the sky as their essential element. The ritual songs of the mehmoed are orally transmitted, unlike the rituals of male religious practitioners in Guangxi such as Taoist priests, Ritual Masters, and mogong, all of which are text-based. One was led rather easily to posit a dichotomy in which male performers had texts, and female performers had repertoires which were orally transmitted. This division also seemed to hold true for certain seasonal song genres, at least in Guangxi. For that matter, shamanic traditions cross-culturally are seen as predominantly or exclusively oral traditions. Recent research among the Tày-speaking communities in northern Vietnam has confounded this tidy picture. Religious practitioners among the Tày include the Pt, who in many cases have texts which incorporate segments of shamanic sky journeys and may be either male or female; and the Then, also both male and female, who have extensive repertoires of shamanic rituals which are performed and transmitted textually. The Then have a performance style that is recognisably based on shamanic journeying, but elaborated as a form of art song, complete with instrumental accompaniment (two- or three-stringed lutes), ritual dances, and flamboyant costumes. Apart from individual performances, there are large-scale rituals conducted by as many as a dozen priests. The present paper gives an overview of the practices and rituals of the Then, based on recent fieldwork in Vietnam and Guangxi, and discusses the implications these have for our conventional understandings of shamanism, literacy, gender, and the cultural geography of the border regions. Full article

The Batek are a forest and forest-fringe dwelling population numbering around 1,500 located in Peninsular Malaysia. Most Batek groups were mobile forest-dwelling foragers and collectors until the recent past. The Batek imbue the forest with religious significance that they inscribe onto the landscape through movement, everyday activities, storytelling, trancing and shamanic journeying. However, as processes of globalization transform Malaysian landscapes, many Batek groups have been deterritorialized and relocated to the forest fringes where they are often pressured into converting to world religions, particularly Islam. Batek religious beliefs and practices have been re-shaped by their increasing encounters with global flows of ideologies, technologies, objects, capital and people, as landscapes are opened up to development. This article analyzes the ways these encounters are incorporated into the fabric of the Batek’s religious world and how new objects and ideas have been figuratively and literally assimilated into their taboo systems and cosmology. Particular attention is paid to the impacts of globalization as expressed through tropes of fear. Full article