Shamanism
world evil
SHAMANISM is the name commonly given to the type of religion which once prevailed among all the Ural-Altaic peoples,-Tungus, Mongol, and Turkish,-and which still lives in various parts of northern Asia in spite of the progress of Mohammedanism, Buddhism, and Christianity. The shaman himself (in Turkish, kam) is a
wizard-priest, closely akin to the medicine-men of savage tribes in other parts of the world. Outsiders often describe Shamanism as pure devil-worship, but in reality the shaman or kam deals with good as well as with evil spirits, especially with the good spirits of ancestors (cf. RELIGION, vol. xx. p. 363). Among the Altaians, for example, the practices of the sorcerers rest on an elaborate
cosmogony and a developed doctrine of good and evil powers, the friends and enemies of man. The kam has the power of influencing these by magic ritual, and his gift is hereditary,-his own ancestors, now good spirits, being the great assistants of his work. His two chief functions are to perform sacrifice, with which is conjoined the procuring of oracles, and to purify houses after a death,
preventing the dead man from continuing his injurious presence among the living; see the full accounts of Radloff, Aus Siberien, 1884, vol. ii. In his magical apparatus a drum (tiingiir) holds the chief place. The ceremonies have a dramatic character, the wizard acting an ascent to the heavens or a descent to the under-world, and holding colloquy with their denizens in scenes of great excitement
ending in ecstasy and physical collapse. The epithet of devil-worship as applied to the Altaian Shamanism is so far justified that the great enemy of man, Erlik, the king of the lower world, from whom death and all evils come, is much courted, addressed as father and guide, and propitiated with offerings. He is not, however, a power co-ordinate with the highest good god Kaira Kan,
but is the creature of the latter, who banished him underground for his evil deeds.
User Comments