SHAMANISM OF THE NATIVES OF SIBERIA 



By I. M. Casanowicz, 



Assistant Curator, Division of Old World Archeology, United States National 



Museum 



[With 2 plates] 



Shamanism is the name loosely giA^en to certain religiomagic 

 beliefs and practices found generally in primitive communities in 

 which the officiating priest or functionary is a shaman. It does not 

 designate a specific religion, but a certain religious attitude based 

 on the animistic view of nature, the view that the world is pervaded 

 by spiritual forces — gods and spirits — which affect for good or ill 

 human life, and that certain persons can enter into close relations 

 with these powers and control them, and thus be mediators between 

 man and the spirit world. In fact, that men, or at least some men, 

 can enter into communication with the spiritual powers and use 

 them for benevolent or maleficent ends is a universal belief, the 

 common presupposition of magic as well as of religion. But more 

 specifically the term Shamanism is at present applied to those semi- 

 religious and semimagical procedures of the ecstatic wizards among 

 the native tribes of Siberia. The Shamanism of these peoples — 

 commonly called the Ural-Altaic tribes — may be considered as a 

 specialized and highly elaborated form of the universal practice. 

 It is there associated with a full and varied religion, polytheism 

 or polydaemonism, generally with a supreme god over all, of which 

 it is an essential and central part and connected with sacrifices, 

 liturgical prayers, chants, and formulae. 



AREA OF THE SHAMANISTIC CULT 



All the peoples of northern Asia, especially of the eastern part 

 of it, the Ugro-Finns, the Tunguse, the Mongolian, and Turkish 

 tribes, were formerly adherents of Shamanism. But Buddhism, 

 Mohammedanism, and, since the Russian conquest in the seventeenth 

 century, Christianity (in its orthodox version), have largely en- 

 croached upon it, so that it is now in a moribund condition and 

 rapidly disappearing. It is at present best represented by the 



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