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Shamanism is at the present time the popular religion, if indeed there is any that can be so designated. The primitive worship of nature appears to be quite sufficient for the religious aspirations of the Corean native, and with his imaginative brain he has peopled the earth with evil and good spirits, as well as giving them to the elements, the sky, and the morning star.
I do not think that it was so deeply felt even by the ancient Babylonians or the modern Arabs and Hindoos as by our red men. It is no wonder they prefer the Catholic religion to the Protestant. There is a Micmac legend which is so magical and mystical, so inspired with Eskimo Shamanism, that it would not be remarkable if it had been originally a sacred song. This is The Giant Magicians.
Each people has its peculiar customs, such as the style of dress, the mode of constructing a house, or rowing a boat. All are pagans and indulge in Shamanism, but each tribe has forms of its own. All are fishers and hunters, their principal support being derived from the river. The Goldee boat was so much like a Gilyak one that I could see no difference.
I believe that while darkness, hunger, fear, and similar causes could not fail to create a rude religion anywhere, as Moncure Conway has shown, yet that the derivation from one beginning, or at least later modifications from it, has been very great indeed. Investigation indicates that it was in Assyria, at a very remote age, that Shamanism had, if not its origin, at least its fullest development.
Pantheism's Destruction of Boundaries. In its rudest forms, this pantheism branches out into animism or shamanism, fetichism and phallicism. In its higher forms, it becomes polytheism, idolatry and defective philosophy. Having centuries ago corrupted Buddhism it is the malaria which, unseen and unfelt, is ready to poison and corrupt Christianity.
Man's actions are governed not so much by what he intellectually believes as by what he vividly realises; and it is this vivid realisation of diabolical presence which has given rise to the religion of Shamanism.
The Tunguses are of a mild, amiable disposition, easily governed and easily influenced, and seem to have made their way over so large an extent of country more through the sufferance of other tribes than through any aggressive power or disposition of their own. Their original religion was Shamanism, but they now profess almost universally the Greco-Russian faith and receive Christian names.
During the rise of the Mongols this religion, which closely resembled the shamanism of the ancient Mongols, spread in Mongolia, and through the Mongols it made great progress in China, where it had been insignificant until their time. This influence was noticeable in the Chinese sculptor Liu Yüan; after him it became stronger and stronger, lasting until the Manchu epoch.
The only real difference between the Voodoo and Pow-wow practices is that the former is, so to speak, the blacker and more revolting. This is because a low state of culture has induced the believers in it to retain more of the coarse witchcraft on which Shamanism was based, or out of which it grew.
This combination was a good substitute for the old Chinese theory that the emperor was the Son of Heaven; it increased the prestige and the splendour of the dynasty. At the same time the old shamanism was legitimized under a Buddhist reinterpretation. Thus Buddhism became a sort of official religion.
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