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SHAMANISM
What Is Shamanism?
Shamanism is a certain function in early, not hierarchical societies or tribes. This function can be compared, in some way, to the role of priest in more developed and civilized societies. Shaman is someone, who communicates with the above in the interest of the whole tribe or it’s individual members. He is a combination of doctor, priest and a prophet in one person.
Each society always had and still has it’s own people who specialize in uncommon, secret knowledge. They commit their lives to study knowledge of spiritual matters, sometimes they do achieve great new results sometimes they just live in hierarchy to follow mainstream orthodox beliefs and serve the hierarchy. Most often, such life in well established hierarchy gives well stabilized and free from material troubles life. For example, in the Ancient Egypt there were priests devoted to various gods who developed a lot of skillful crafts. Some of them specialized in knowledge which we could call today “scientific”, some of them were more on the esoteric, spiritual side.
Priests usually function as part of highly developed institution and hierarchy and this is called clergy. In this article we will speak about typical priest and not any mystic living somewhere in a cave. Such mystics quite often bear close resemblance to shamans. And in this article we would like to concentrate on differences between a typical priest and a shaman. Although much good can be said about hierarchical priests, and quite often they achieve amazing level of spiritual development and dedication to their beliefs, a majority of any clergy is usually rather on professional then truly spiritual side.
What is priest’s role in a highly developed, organized civilization can be compared to shaman’s role in less developed societies and tribes. But shaman is not just someone who knows certain spiritual truths and dogmas, he actually creates and lives according to them. Shaman’s knowledge is often inherited in certain way from his\her spiritual teacher, but very big part of his knowledge and skill he must obtain himself.
Let’s compare some features of a typical priest of well developed society and a shaman:
| PRIEST (any formal religion)
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SHAMAN
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Believes in world being created and governed by some kind of god or gods and does have conviction that he knows almost all about how the world is constructed and why it is governed in this way, puts man in the center of creation
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Believes in world being governed by forces, which are mysterious but can be used or even forced to serve man. Does not discuss why the world is created the way it is, realizes that this is a mystery beyond man’s reason and that we are actually nothing to those
forces
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Believes in other world, life after death and some kind of judgment of our good and bad deeds
(sins)
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Believes in multidimensional structure of the world and not necessarily believes in life after death, at least in the way the priest does. Very rarely discusses influence of sins on our life after death
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Usually respects certain hierarchy, very often benefits from luxurious lifestyle of his position in this
hierarchy
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Is highly individual with no sense of hierarchy over him. Almost always leads a simplistic life of a hermit, his possessions are limited to few ritual requisites
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Relies more on book knowledge and official dogmatism that he earned during regular studies, never introduces his own elements to the doctrine because he is part of hierarchy which will enforce him to obey or exclude him
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Relies more on own experience, sometimes continues main lines of his spiritual guide, but concentrates on his personal experience and builds his knowledge throughout all life. There is no hierarchy that could exclude him, in this sense he is free
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Often has clear and ordered view of the world and believes what others told him about it and its creator
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The world is a mystery to shaman and he never believes in anything until he gets it by himself by means of direct
experience
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Believes in one God or many Gods who really care about human fate, are merciful, almighty,
eternal
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Believes in powerful forces in the Universe to whom the humans are just nothing. They not necessarily are merciful and often they are totally ambivalent
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Often takes a posture of being a humble servant to his God or those Gods and commits his life to serve them
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Is more like a warrior- develops certain techniques and skills to influence the world and powers governing it, does not play the role of a humble
serwant
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Is more intellectual and educated type of a
person
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Is more intuitive and often what we would call primitive kind of a
person
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Subdues his will totally to the God or Gods, does not dare to have any personal will
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Treats his will as his one of the main instruments to control his life and surrounding world
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As we can see there are many significant differences between those two examples of spiritual leaders of a society. Therefore we can not say a shaman is a priest of a tribe. He is more of a maverick and self-risen wise man. His knowledge is not coming from books and there are no books for a shaman to be used by him. Shaman very often possess a great knowledge about nature, plants and their influence on human health. He also has mastered habits of birds and land animals. Unlike the priest, he does not consider himself as superior being to them, on the contrary, takes great effort and time to learn that any smallest plant or being is just as important as him. This leads to unusual sense of integration of the shaman with the surrounding world, he becomes an integral part of the world and does not draw borders of ME-GOD-NATURE type of the priest. And while clergy of developed societies often try to explain the nature of things using logic and reasoning, the shaman is not using any logic to explain the world. He is just observing it and tries to use it’s mechanisms to his own benefits.
There is 2 main ways to broaden the spiritual awareness for the priest: prayer and fast. By means of the fast he is preparing his body for wider and more subtle interaction with the world and better concentration on his internal mind, the soul. In this aspect the priest who does pray and fast is becoming quite similar to the shaman, who also uses those techniques to broaden his awareness and to experience visions and illumination. But the shaman also uses another technique to broaden his understanding and vision: the substances causing different states of consciousness, such as peyote, “psylocibe” mushrooms or certain kinds of herbs. To members of developed societies those substances are called hallucinogens. The meaning of the word “hallucination” is: “something that does not really exist, a kind of dream without any sense and useful meaning.
To the shaman, however, a state after use of such substances and all of visions experienced during the trance are as real and material as whatever we experience while normal, everyday life. He uses this to the benefit of self development.
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