Szamanizm północnoamerykański

Abstract

Primitive concepts of disease fall roughly into five main categories: sorcery, breach of taboo, disease-object intrusion, spirit intrusion and soul loss. Sorcery is of two types. The magician who wishes to bring sickness or injury on a person may construct a small image which represents the victim. This image is then transfixed, burned, or otherwise maltreated, all these operations being accompanied by suitable incantations. Such measures are supposed to cause the person against whom /they are directed to fall ill. This type of magic is labeled as imitative. In the second type, called contagious magic, the sorcerer obtains some parts of his victim’s body, such as hair or nail clippings, or even some article of clothing which has been in /intimate contact with his body. Sickness may be also explained as a punishment sent by the gods for breach of religious or social prohibitions. The breach may be quite unintentional and even unknown to the sufferer but it is none the less regarded as the real cause of his sickness. Disease is also attributed to the presence in the body of some malefic foreign substance as well as to the presence of evil spirits, ghosts, or demons. Disease is often regarded as a result of loss of the soul. This may be abstracted by ghosts or sorcerers; or, when leaving the body during sleep, it may meet with some accident on its nocturnal ramblings which prevents its return. The primitive medical- practice is the result of a very simple cause and effect sort of reasoning. If sickness is due to loss of the soul, it is the shaman’s task to find it and bring it back to its owner. If illness is due to evil magic worked against the sufferer, counter-magic must be invoked to discover the malevolent sorcerer and force him to cease his operations. Sickness caused by object intrusion is treated by the extraction of the malefic substance, while the manifest remedy for diseases resulting from spirit intrusion is to oust the intruder. Similarly, if illness is a punishment sent by the gods for a breach of taboo, the obvious corrective is to propitiate the angered god or spirit. Mental suggestion plays an enormous part in the cures as well as in the sicknesses. Extracted disease objects are always shown to the patient, who often recovers under the powerful suggestion that the sickness is gone. The most complete expression of shamanism is found in the Arctic and central Asian regions. The shaman cures sickness, directs the communal sacrifices, and escorts the souls of the dead to the other world. But the phenomenon is not limited to these areas, it is encountered in southeast Asia, Oceania, and among North American aboriginal tribes. In Siberia and in northeast Asia a person becomes a shaman by hereditary transmission of the shamanistic profession or by spontaneous vocation or election. In North America, on the other hand, the voluntary quest for the powers constitutes the principal method. The shaman in this area may be defined as a practitioner who, with the help of spirits, cures the sick or reveals hidden things etc. while being in an ecstasy. During the trance he may leave his own body, or he may simply summon the spirits to him and ask them to help him. His principal function remains the healing.