Shamanism

Shamanism refers to a range of traditional beliefs and practices concerned with communication with the spirit world. There are many variations in shamanism throughout the world, though there are some beliefs that are shared by all forms of shamanism:

· The spirits can play important roles in human beings.
· The shamans are to control and cooperate with the spirits for the community's benefit.
· The spirits can be either good or bad.
· Shamans get into a trance by singing, dancing, entheogens and drumming.
· The songs and dances describe the spirit's journey or the shaman's own personal journey to the other world.[citation needed]
· Many shamans imitate many animals and bird spirits. This happens when the shaman's spirit leaves the body and enters into the supernatural world.
· The shamans can treat illnesses or sickness. The main purpose of shamanism is to understand nature and heal the sick.
· The most important object is the drum;[citation needed] it symbolizes many things to a shaman. Sometimes drums are decorated with rattles, bells or bones to represent different spirits and animals, depending on the region and the community.
· Many shamans sacrifice animals such as lambs. They believed that it would help people in healing and gain support from the spirits.[1]
Its practitioners claim the ability to diagnose and cure human suffering and, in some societies, the ability to cause suffering. This is believed to be accomplished by traversing the axis mundi and forming a special relationship with, or gaining control over, spirits. Shamans have been credited with the ability to control the weather, divination, the interpretation of dreams, astral projection, and traveling to upper and lower worlds. Shamanistic traditions have existed throughout the world since prehistoric times.
Some anthropologists and religious scholars define a shaman as an intermediary between the natural and spiritual world, who travels between worlds in a state of trance. Once in the spirit world, the shaman would commune with the spirits for assistance in healing, hunting or weather management. Ripinsky-Naxon describes shamans as, "People who have a strong interest in their surrounding environment and the society of which they are a part."
Other anthropologists critique the term "shamanism", arguing that it is a culturally specific word and institution and that by expanding it to fit any healer from any traditional society it produces a false unity between these cultures and

...creates a false idea of an initial human religion predating all others. However, others say that these anthropologists simply fail to recognize the commonalities between otherwise diverse traditional societies.
Shamanism is based on the premise that the visible world is pervaded by invisible forces or spirits that affect the lives of the living. In contrast to animism and animatism, which any and usually all members of a society practice, shamanism does not require specialized knowledge or abilities. It could be said that shamans are the experts employed by modern, animists or animist communities. Shamans are, however, often organized into full-time ritual or spiritual associations, as are priests, being the unordained priests of instinct.



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POWER OF THE SHAMAN:
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Where Does It Come From, How Does It Work?
"I do not deny that White Light Shields are protective. I simply maintain that Shamans channel what I call heavy voltage. Ordinary people may NOT have the power to draw upon sufficient "voltage" to produce the desired effect." (source)

PRESENTED BY
the Wanderling

PROLOGUE:
In the fall of 1991, in the remote part of an ancient mountain range, high above the tree line, a group of modern day hikers stumbled across the body of a man frozen to death in the snow, fully dressed in clothes of a tribal nature, his body nearly intact and almost perfectly preserved. Incredibly, tests showed the man had been frozen 5000 years years before, sometime between 3350-3140 BC. After a rather intensive investigation over a period of years by a team of scientific experts from a variety of fields, it was concluded that the man appeared to have been a Shaman, presumably dying of exposure when caught out in the open during a mystical retreat on the side of the treacherous mountain.
Several associated facts presented themselves for such speculation. Like many shamans from many cultures the body was tattooed; his weapons, consisting of a roughly-hewn bow made of yew, several unfinished arrows, and an all wood dagger, resembled dummy weapons associated with shamans in other cultures; he carried a medicine bag containing, among other things, a leather thong on which was threaded two pieces of a common birch fungus Piptoporus betulinus which contains polyporic acid C, an effective antibody, especially against stomach microbacteria, which would indicate, if not a specific knowledge of herbs and natural ingredients, at least a general acceptance of their use. A similar fungus, also closely associated with the birch, Amanita muscaria, is not only hallucinogenic but has been used by various shamans cultures as an aid to ecstasy before the dawn of history. It is possible that, if not authentically hallucinogenic, the ones the frozen iceman carried, could at least have been believed to be so; he also carried with him, and unusually so, a copper-headed axe. A very rare object for the time, and because it was metal, for the most part quite valuable in those days, marking him as an individual of high status. Last, an item not discussed at any length in the numerous reports on the frozen man was a net he carried, an object not typically found in hunting as much as used to trap spirits and seen in various...

...forms as a dream catcher and such. Taken together, the fact that he carried only what HE needed and not a variety for wider shamanistic use, again underscores his mountain sojourn as having a more "mystical retreat" aspect to it.
And finally, while it is true the frozen man's location was somewhat close to ancient trade routes and trails which ran through passes nearby, he was NOT actually on one. Aerial photographs of the area show that the site he was found is not in easily accessible terrain, thus it is thought unreasonable he simply strayed there from one of the passes. The body was well above known trails, high in the mountains above the 10,400 foot level, and alone it seems, suggesting the possibility that he had traveled there to be closer to the gods.
The problem most people had with the situation was not that the man might have been a Shaman, because a preponderance of the evidence seemed to implicate nothing other than that, but where he was found. Not in the tundra of Siberia or the ancient ice path of the Rocky Mountains in North America, but the Oetzaler Alps between Austria and Italy, a location that eventually became modern day Europe, an area NEVER thought of in the present era for any sort of a background in things Shaman or even of tribal people. Yet there he was, a 5000 year old frozen Shaman right in the heart of Europe.



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