Judika Illes - The Element Encyclopedia of Witchcraft - The Complete A–Z for the Entire Magical World

Childbirth, spiritual initiations, healing, and funerals: dangerous on the spiritual plane because of intense contact with other realms. On the physical plane, risk of physical contamination (infection) frequently exists. (Shamanically-speaking, these planes and dangers are not distinct.)

Hunting: eating meat involves killing a fellow creature, whose spirit guardians must be appeased to avoid disaster and maintain spiritual balance

Agriculture: digging holes or otherwise rooting around in Earth may be understood as rape if Earth hasn’t expressly granted permission, which perhaps only the shaman can hear or interpret. Harvest may be understood as murder, as in “John Barleycorn must die.” Plants are fellow living creatures, possessing their own spirit guardians who must be propitiated and appeased to maintain spiritual balance

There is no need to accuse or ask whether someone is a shaman. Her results speak for themselves. If things consistently aren’t going well, a more successful shaman will be found. It’s a little bit like traditional Chinese medicine, where a physician is desirable and respected only provided her patients remain healthy.

The shaman provides a needed service that, although fraught with spiritual danger, is expected to be reliable and dependable. The shaman must perform functions as needed: like a modern physician, she may be “ on call ” at all times, 24/7. The popular vision of shamanism as the role primitive societies invented for those with seizure disorders or the mentally unbalanced is incorrect, simplistic, and based on the notion that all other realms and spirits are “ made up ,” because if they don’t exist then, of course, the shaman’s journey is pure fantasy or fraud.

Shamanism is performed in various ways, through soul-journeying (going to the spirits), or through ritual possession (having them come to you.) The shaman summons spirits and ghosts and sends them packing—exorcism—as individual need arises. Her work may be enhanced by music, especially drums, chants, singing, dance, or silence. The entranced shaman may appear to be asleep or in a coma or even dead. For ancient people lacking scientific context, with no hospital monitoring equipment to measure life, the shaman who appears dead is dead, at least temporarily. She is a figure of tremendous power.

The shaman may develop profound individual ties with animals, plants, spirits, or other allies. The ecstatic component of shamanism cannot be emphasized enough; the very word “ ecstasy ” derives from a Greek shamanic term “ existanai ” (“ to put out of place ” as in a soul out of body). At best, shamanism is an ecstatic, transcendent, rapturous experience, for the individual shaman and also for the community whom she leads in shamanic ritual. This intense, dynamic rapture can be experienced and witnessed through ecstatic music and dance, the best sex, ritual possession, some forms of divination, or glossolalia (speaking in tongues), all of which may be components of shamanism.

Let’s be honest: the shaman can make people nervous, some people anyway, past as well as present. She knows a lot of stuff that you don’t. She knows stuff you don’t even know that you don’t know. Through soul-journeying and clairvoyance, she may know stuff about you that you would prefer not be known.

The shaman is very likely also to be a solitary person, at least some of the time. The soul-journey, the psychic journey is an intensely private, individual experience. The shaman talks with animals; the shaman talks with dead people; the shaman talks with ghosts and spirits who scare other people (and not every spirit or ghost, ancestral or otherwise, is pleasant, attractive, and nice); the shaman may even be able to assume the form of animals. Imagine today, when someone is observed muttering intensely to themselves, should a cell-phone or other similar modern reassurance that all is well not be immediately apparent, most of us will automatically give the mutterer a wide berth. Some shamans mutter all the time. (A Slavic euphemism for witch is “ mutterer .”) Are they talking to their spirit allies, your long-dead ex-husband, or some other shaman across town who can magically hear them? Or maybe they’re just nuts. (Among the many telltale stereotypes resulting in an accusation of witchcraft during the Burning Times was being observed muttering to yourself, particularly if you were a ragged, old beggar-woman.)

What if the shaman yields to temptation and puts her powers to personal, selfish use? What if, in a time of conflicting interests, the shaman is bribed to favor one party or another?

New Age people are often dismayed to hear those from traditional cultures speak negatively of witchcraft and witches. Tolerance of witches is expected from these seemingly magic-tolerant societies. Of course, cultures that incorporate magical practices have also been known to burn witches. In these cases, “ witch ” is often understood to mean a shaman gone bad, a breach of a sacred trust.

The shaman doesn’t have to become corrupt to stop working full-time for the community. Eventually some suffer burn-out, at least temporarily, too tired or psychically drained. Maybe, for one reason or another, the spirits stop talking to you. Some shamans, perhaps following bad experiences (the primordial “bad trip”), failure, emotional exhaustion, psychic torpor, or perhaps just as directed by the spirits, might retreat into privacy—a cave, a hut in the forest, a little home on a mountain top or in a swamp—to recuperate, replenish their energy and live a private, magical life. People would know the shaman was there, this person in the wilds. She might be frightening, they might leave her alone most of the time, warn their children not to bother her—who knows what she could do if provoked?—but in a moment of desperation, when a magical solution seems like the only option, particularly when a private secret magical solution is required, one would know exactly where to go to plead or pay for assistance.

Among those occupations claiming descent from the primal shaman:

Witches, wizards, practitioners of magic

Conjurers, illusionists, purveyors of tricks, ventriloquists, sleight-of-hand artists

Diviners, readers, seers, fortune-tellers

Herbalists and healers of all persuasions, including modern physicians

Musicians, actors, dancers, puppeteers

Anthropological discussions of witchcraft’s origins almost inevitably refer to witchcraft as deriving from ancient “ fertility cults .” Little if any explanation is ever given as to exactly what constitutes a fertility cult, as if the meaning of the term should be self-evident. To a very large extent this is because old-school anthropologists—and society in general—were uncomfortable with explicit discussion of sexuality until recent decades (and not always even now).

The use of the word “ cult ” is the tip-off that we are outsiders looking in. Cult is a word used by outsiders to describe a phenomenon of which they are not part and toward which they bear either ambivalence or disapproval. “Cult” in modern usage carries a negative connotation: we have religion, strange other people have cults. At best, “fertility cult” has an archaic ring evoking Orientalist images of sacred prostitution. At worst, “cult” carries sinister overtones: people must be rescued from “cults,” deprogrammed from the brainwashing kind.