Shamanism

Shamanism – the religion of certain peoples based on the belief that the world is pervaded by good and evil spirits who can be influenced or controlled only by the shamans. Shaman – a priest of shamanism; a medicine man of a similar religion, especially among certain tribes of North American Indians. Shaman inherits its post from his ancestors, in case if family has two or more sons (exactly sons as according to shamanism woman can't be a shaman) one of them is elected. As shaman that son is elected who suffered with terrible decease and recovered himself without any help. It is considered that during his self-recovery future shaman learn how to penetrate other worlds and communicate with spirits of dead that may give answers for number of questions and send blessing and healing to their nation through shaman. Some cultures consider that shaman has to wander at desert for some time in order to learn how to communicate with alternative spiritual worlds and manage the nature elements.

Shaman is just an ordinary person with the ability to communicate with spirits. Spirits that help shaman may be of various kinds. Those may be spirits of animals, birds, trees or dead fellow tribesmen. Spirits are able to send shaman and tribe different good like protection, healing or blessing. To communicate with spirits shaman has to reach certain state like Buddha's nirvana; shaman reaches that state by means of monotone singing, drum banging, dancing etc. There are also tribes where shamans use natural psychotropic substances.

Some of the shamans use tricks in order not to lose their post, for example if someone is ill shaman imitates communication with spirits and say that the core of sickness is (for example) stone that is help up at one's stomach (in case if patient suffers with stomach ache). Shaman hides stone in his hand and performs certain activity standing next to his patient and than 'retrieves' the stone of the patient's stomach, and here you go sick man is healed, people are pleased and applause shaman and shaman keep his post. Some shamans say that this trick is rather effective as sometimes all that patient need to recover is confidence in the fact that he has already recovered with the help of shaman and holy spirits.

So, in fact shaman is a link between tribe and spirits that protects them, without shaman tribe would be totally helpless as they is not able to reject believe that were cultivated through ages. They won't replace shaman with medicine in any case as they sure that shaman can help them but they know nothing about medicines. Sure modern medicine is more effective than shamans' dances but not for those who believed in them for ages. So shamans keep tricking tribe and tribe keep believe in him, everyone is happy and life goes on in ordinary way.