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Updated: June 1, 2025
For wherever Shamanism exists, there is to be found, in company with it, an older sorcery, or witchcraft, which it professes to despise, and against which it does battle. As the Catholic priest, by Bible incantations or scriptural magic, exorcises devils and charms cattle or sore throats, disowning the darker magic of older days, so the Shaman acts against the real wizard.
Toward the end of the seventeenth century a mission went from Siberia to Thibet, and its members returned as lamas and bringing the paraphernalia of the new religion which they at once declared to their people. The Bhudistic faith was thus founded and spread over the country until Shamanism was gradually superseded.
It is not difficult to understand how Shamanism with its drums and darkened rooms, its conjuring of evil-doers and extraction of diseases in tangible forms, should have spread from Central Asia to the Laplanders and Eskimo, and thence to the red Indians. Very little attention has been paid to the intercourse actually existing at the present day between these races.
It is claimed by many that the whole system of Shamanism is a gigantic imposture practised by a few cunning priests upon the easy credulity of superstitious natives. This I am sure is a prejudiced view.
And if we make use of the term Shamanism instead of the more exact one of Animism, it is for the very purpose of illustrating our contention that the underlying paganisms of the Japanese archipelago, unwritten and unformulated, are older than the religions founded on books; and that these paganisms, still vital and persistent, constantly modify and corrupt the recognized religious.
Instead of a unity to the mind, as of sun and solar system, there is nothing but planets, asteroids and a constant rain of shooting-stars. Shamanism. Glancing at some phases of the actual unwritten religions of Japan we name Shamanism, Mythical Zoölogy, Fetichism, Phallicism, and Tree and Serpent Worship.
This is called Shamanism, and is said to have been the religion of the Tartar race before the introduction of Buddhism, and is still the creed of the Siberians; a memory of solitary canoes on moonlit seas and of spicy pine odors mingled with the tonic of moist kelp and salt-sea air. A memory of friends who were altogether charming, of a festival without a flaw.
Now as Shamanism has at the present day its stronghold among the Turanian races of Central Asia, it may greatly strengthen the theory, somewhat doubted of late, of the early Accadian predecessors of the Chaldeans and their Turanian origin, if we can only prove that their magical religion was the same as that of the Tartars.
The study of magic as it is believed in or understood by the Indians of America is extremely interesting, for it involves that of all supernaturalism or of all religion whatever. But if we, declining all question as to the origin of monotheism, limit ourselves definitely to what is known of Shamanism alone, we shall still have before us an immense field for investigation.
Religion Buddhism Bonzes Their power Shamanism Spirits Spirits of the mountain Stone heaps Sacred trees Seized by the spirits Safe-guard against them The wind Sorcerers and sorceresses Exorcisms Monasteries Temples Buddha Monks Their customs and clothing Nuns Their garments Religious ceremonies The tooth-stone.
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