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With some tribes the cult societies have greater powers than the clan; with other tribes clan government is the more important; but always there is a conflict of authority, and there is a perpetual war between Shamanistic and civil government. These Shamans and cult societies have a great variety of functions to perform.
Their worship of Heaven was their official "representative" religion; their shamanism the private religion of the individual in his daily life. The alien rulers, accordingly, showed interest in the Chinese shamans as well as in the shamanistic aspects of Mahayana Buddhism.
The new Confucians who came forward as experts in the moral code were very different men from their predecessors; above all, like all their contemporaries, they were strongly influenced by the shamanistic magic that had developed in the Ch'in period.
Truly it was a strange collection, and I should imagine of priceless value, for among them were to be found Buddhistic, Sivaistic and Shamanistic writings that we had never before seen or heard of, together with the lives of a multitude of Bodhisatvas, or distinguished saints, written in various tongues, some of which we did not understand.
Others withdrew to their villages and became village priests. They organized the religious festivals in the village, carried out the ceremonies connected with family events, and even conducted the exorcism of evil spirits with shamanistic dances; they took charge, in short, of everything connected with customary observances and morality. The Chou lords were great respecters of propriety.
The purpose of Shamanistic institutions is to control the conduct of the members of the tribe in relation to mythic personages, the mysterious beings in which the savage men believe. In the mind of the savage the world is peopled by a host of mythic beings, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic. The difference between man and brute recognized in civilization, is unrecognized in savagery.
In every tribe there are Shamans, designated variously by white men as "medicine men," "priests," "priest doctors," "theurgists," etc. In many tribes, perhaps in all, the people are organized into Shamanistic societies; but that these societies are invariably recognized is not certain. The Shamans are always found. Among the Zuni there are thirteen of these cult societies.
Even a whole century of partial civilisation and Christian training cannot wholly counteract the irresistible Shamanistic influence which is exerted upon the mind by the wilder, more terrible manifestations of Nature in these lonely and inhospitable regions.
The delinquent is very commonly of a superstitious habit of mind; he is a great believer in luck, spells, divination and destiny, and in omens and shamanistic ceremony.
So also such fragments as we possess of a specialized or hereditary indigent class, or of a segregated criminal or dissolute class; although among these latter the devout habit of mind is apt to take the form of a naive animistic belief in luck and in the efficacy of shamanistic practices perhaps more frequently than it takes the form of a formal adherence to any accredited creed.
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