What is now
generally known of Shamanism is very little; and that has been
perverted, like the rest of the non-Christian religions. It is called the
"heathenism" of Mongolia, and wholly without reason, for it is one of
the oldest religions of India. It is spirit-worship, or belief in the
immortality of the souls, and that the latter are still the same men they were
on earth, though their bodies have lost their objective form, and man has
exchanged his physical for a spiritual nature.
In its present
shape, it is an offshoot of primitive theurgy, and a practical blending
of the visible with the invisible world. Whenever a denizen of earth desires to
enter into communication with his invisible brethren, he has to assimilate
himself to their nature, i.e., he meets these beings half-way, and,
furnished by them with a supply of spiritual essence, endows them, in his turn,
with a portion of his physical nature, thus enabling them sometimes to appear
in a semi-objective form. It is a temporary exchange of natures, called theurgy.
Shamans are called sorcerers, because they are said to evoke the
"spirits" of the dead for purposes of necromancy.
The true
Shamanism — striking features of which prevailed in India in the days of
Megasthenes (300 B.C.) — can no more be judged by its degenerated scions among
the Shamans of Siberia, than the religion of Gautama-Buddha can
be interpreted by the fetishism of some of his followers in Siam and Burmah.
It is in the chief lamaseries of Mongolia and Thibet that it has
taken refuge; and there Shamanism, if so we must call it, is practiced to the
utmost limits of intercourse allowed between man and "spirit." The
religion of the lamas has faithfully preserved the primitive science of magic,
and produces as great feats now as it did in the days of Kublai-Khan and his
barons.
The ancient
mystic formula of the King Srong-ch-Tsans-Gampo, the "Aum mani padme
houm,"* effects its wonders now as well as in the seventh century.
Avalokitesvara, highest of the three Boddhisattvas, and patron saint of Thibet,
projects his shadow, full in the view of the faithful, at the lamasery of
Dga-G'Dan, founded by him; and the luminous form of Son-Ka-pa, under the shape
of a fiery cloudlet, that separates itself from the dancing beams of the sunlight,
holds converse with a great congregation of lamas, numbering thousands; the
voice descending from above, like the whisper of the breeze through foliage.
Anon, say the Thibetans, the beautiful appearance vanishes in the shadows of
the sacred trees in the park of the lamasery. (Isis Unveiled 2, pp. 615-16)
* Aum (mystic Sanscrit term of the Trinity),
mani (holy jewel), padme (in the lotus, padma being the name for
lotus), houm (be it so). The six syllables in the
sentence correspond to the six chief powers of nature emanating from Buddha
(the abstract deity, not Gautama), who is the seventh, and the Alpha and Omega of being.
The
Shamans of Siberia are all ignorant and illiterate. Those of Tartary and Thibet
— few in number — are mostly learned men in their own way, and will not allow
themselves to fall under the control of spirits of any kind. The former are mediums
in the full sense of the word; the latter, "magicians." It is not
surprising that pious and superstitious persons, after seeing one of such
crises, should declare the Shaman to be under demoniacal possession. As in the
instances of Corybantic and Bacchantic fury among the ancient Greeks, the
"spiritual" crisis of the Shaman exhibits itself in violent dancing
and wild gestures. Little by little the lookers-on feel the spirit of imitation
aroused in them; seized with an irresistible impulse, they dance, and become,
in their turn, ecstatics; and he who begins by joining the chorus, gradually and
unconsciously takes part in the gesticulations, until he sinks to the ground
exhausted, and often dying. 625
But,
while the illiterate Shaman is a victim, and during his crisis sometimes sees
the persons present, under the shape of various animals, and often makes them
share his hallucination, his brother Shaman, learned in the mysteries of the
priestly colleges of Thibet, expels the elementary creature, which can
produce the hallucination as well as a living mesmerizer, not through the help
of a stronger demon, but simply through his knowledge of the nature of the
invisible enemy. Where academicians have failed, as in the cases of the
Cevennois, a Shaman or a lama would have soon put an end to the epidemic. 626
SHAMANS, or Samaneans. — An order of Buddhists among the
Tartars, especially those of Siberia. They are possibly akin to the
philosophers anciently known as Brachmanes, mistaken sometimes for Brahmans.* They
are all magicians, or rather sensitives or mediums
artificially developed. At present those who act as priests among the Tartars
are generally very ignorant, and far below the fakirs in knowledge and
education. Both men and women may be Shamans.
* From the
accounts of Strabo and Megasthenes, who visited Palibothras, it would seem that
the persons termed by him Samanean, or Brachmane priests, were simply
Buddhists. "The singularly subtile replies of the Samanean or Brahman
philosophers, in their interview with the conqueror, will be found to contain
the spirit of the Buddhist doctrine," remarks Upham. (See the
"History and Doctrine of Buddhism"; and Hale's
"Chronology," vol. iii, p. 238.) (Isis Unveiled 1, xl)
Ammian, in his
history of Julian's Persian expedition, gives the story by stating that one day
Hystaspes, as he was boldly penetrating into the unknown regions of Upper
India, had come upon a certain wooded solitude, the tranquil recesses of which
were "occupied by those exalted sages, the Brachmanes (or Shamans).
Instructed by their teaching in the science of the motions of the world and of the heavenly bodies, and in pure religious rites . . . he transfused them into the
creed of the Magi. The latter, coupling these doctrines with their own peculiar science of foretelling the future, have handed down the whole through
their descendants to succeeding ages." . (Isis Unveiled 2, p. 306)
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