11

Calling on the Spirits

Shamans, Sorcerers, and Mediums

CASE STUDY
The Healing Song of a Kuna1 Shaman of Panama
A Kuna shaman of Panama used a long incantation to successfully escort a
woman through a difficult and potentially fatal childbirth.2 He accomplished this
feat without touching the woman’s body. Among Kuna, who live on islands off the
east coast of Panama, childbirth is typically accompanied by a midwife rather
than a shaman. A shaman is called if a childbirth outcome appears likely to be
fatal for mother or infant. The shaman’s song describes the midwife’s confusion
and her visit to the shaman, as well as the shaman’s visit to the hut of the woman
in labor. Once there, the shaman fumigates the hut, invokes his spirit helpers, and
breathes life into his carved images, which represent tutelary spirits who will
guide him on his journey into the spirit world. On this journey the shaman must
confront Muu, the female power responsible for shaping the spirit of the fetus. In
this difficult birth, Muu has not only refused to release the spirit of the fetus, she
has also captured the spirit of the birthing mother. Without a spirit, which is the
life force, neither the infant nor the birthing mother can survive. In his song, the
shaman describes his long and difficult journey into the spirit world, his encoun-
ters with wild beasts, and his defeat of Muu and her daughters. After persuading
Muu to release the two spirits, the shaman describes in song his preparations for
his return to the world of humans. The shaman’s description of his return from the
spirit world also describes the descent of the infant through the birth canal:
The (sick) woman’s body lies weak,
...
Her exudations drip down below the hammock all like blood, all red.
The inner white tissue extends to the bosom of the earth.
Into the middle of the woman’s white tissue a human being descends. (1983:190)

213
214 Chapter 11

The French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss suggests that the shaman’s ability to
conduct the woman through a difficult labor draws on the woman’s unconscious
awareness that the shaman is symbolically describing the birthing process. As the
woman follows the shaman’s story of his treacherous journey, she associates it with
her own perilous journey. When the shaman describes his success and return, the
woman’s tense muscles relax, allowing the birth to take place.
The shaman’s visible body does not leave the room. He or she evokes aid from
the spirit world through his incantations. His negotiations with Muu were not hos-
tile. They were much like those of a vendor in the marketplace. Both parties sought
to benefit from the transaction. “The fight is not waged against Muu herself, who is
indispensible to procreation, but only against her abuses of power. Once these have
been corrected, relations become friendly” (Lévi-Strauss 1973:187).
Songs are an important part of Kuna political and spiritual life. The leader of each
community informs and educates the people of his village by singing about the
group’s sacred history in a traditional dialect. Voceros translate the songs into the
group’s contemporary dialect or into Spanish. Thus, the singing tradition transmits
knowledge and history about Kuna social life. A healing song performed by a
shaman, who is able to journey into the spirit world, exerts a compelling influence
on his patients and other members of the community. The role of the shaman is to
establish and maintain harmony both within the group and with the spirit world.
Asian energy models discussed in the previous chapter emanated from highly strat-
ified societies based on agriculture, the production of a large food surplus using a
plow. The large food surplus permitted stratification, as well as the emergence of cities
and the development of writing systems. Thus, we know a great deal about early Asian
philosophy and lifestyle through writings and archaeological records. We can also link
their philosophies and lifestyles to their healing practices. In this chapter we will deal
with healing systems, and the philosophies underlying them, that are primarily
recorded in the minds of the healers and are difficult to document in the historical
record.3
Anthropologists have been studying shamans for more than 100 years, docu-
menting both shamanic practices and relationships within the groups of which
shamans are a part. These studies have been based both on observations of
shamanic healing and on interviews with shamans. In general, both historically and
in the present, most anthropologists have concluded that these healing practices are
effective because of shamans’ skills in understanding psychology and social rela-
tionships, as well as the psychobiology of the human body. Treatments are
enhanced by the shamans’ knowledge of herbal medicine.

Shamans, Mediums, Sorcerers and Witches

In this chapter, we focus on healers who call on spirits to aid them in their work.
In so doing, we will distinguish between shamans and mediums, as well as
between sorcerers and witches. Shamans and mediums differ in their procedures
and the philosophies underlying their practices. Shamans summon spirits through
rituals that conduct them on a journey into the spirit world, as in the case of the
Kuna shaman. Mediums heal through spirit possession. They enter into a trance
and allow the spirits to take control of their bodies. Typically, shamans remain
 Calling on the Spirits 215

conscious of their surroundings, whereas mediums do not. Shamans undergo a

long period of training that allows them to control the spirits.4 Mediums undergo
a period of training and initiation in which they learn to invite the spirits to con-
trol them.
A survey of the vast literature on forms of healing calling on the spirits indicates
that the categories of shamans and mediums become a little fuzzy in actual practice.
A primary reason is that those who have studied these forms of healing have
approached it from different perspectives. Some observers have dismissed the prac-
tices as “superstition” or trickery. Shamans and mediums do use theatrical devices
in their healing practices, much as Western medical doctors use placebos. Both the
theatrical devices and placebos can be effective in alleviating symptoms. On one
level, theatrical devices and placebos are effective because they reassure the patient
that his or her illness can be controlled by the shaman or physician. As noted ear-
lier in this book, illness is experienced as disorder. In all traditions, the healer works
to restore order in the mind of the patient and in his or her experience of illness.
One problem in drawing on the voluminous literature on healing systems that rely
on spirit intervention is that the terminology has become standardized only within the
past few decades. Prior to this standardization, observers lumped together a variety of
healing and other ritual interventions. Some early accounts refer to shamans and medi-
ums as “witch doctors” or “magicians.” They did not distinguish among the techniques
and philosophies underlying these practices. In drawing on the literature in this area, I
am relying primarily on accounts that describe with a high degree of precision meth-
ods used by the healer. Most are written by anthropologists, but some are written by
missionaries and other adventurers.5
Sorcerers and witches differ from shamans and mediums according to their
philosophies. Sorcerers, shamans and mediums all seek to enlist the aid of spirit
beings in their enterprises. They differ in their goals. Shamans and mediums use the
aid of spirits in healing; sorcerers enlist the aid of spirits to cause harm to others.
As defined by the eminent British anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard
(1976[1937]), witches are disgruntled individuals who cannot attain their goals
through ordinary social relationships. Typically, a witch might be a cowife of a more
socially powerful first wife. Because of her more powerful social position, the pri-
mary wife can shift her more irksome responsibilities to her subordinate cowives.
The term “witch,” as used by anthropologists, refers to individuals who do not
have the power to fulfill their social goals. The philosophy underlying the concept
of witches and sorcerers is that evil spirits are attracted to human groups. However,
they cannot enter without invitation. Witches invite them into the groups through
their own jealousy and anger. Sorcerers invite evil spirits into the group through
manipulation of ritual symbols. In this chapter, we will focus on shamanism, with
a brief side trip into the social and psychological world of sorcery.

THE HISTORY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF SHAMANISM

The term “shamanism” has been applied to a variety of healing practices that may
have developed independently around the world. They are remarkably similar in their
form and practices. If there is a single original source, that source would have been in
216 Chapter 11

Africa, since this is the where humans evolved. An original hominid species, Homo
erectus, spread out from Africa sometime after two million years ago. We have no
direct evidence that shamanism developed this early. Our only evidence derives from
the similarities in shamanism wherever it is practiced, and shamanism is practiced on
every continent and every known island. Wherever it is practiced, shamanism is a com-
plex that involves calling on the aid of the spirits.
The word “shaman” comes from the Tungus/Evenki people of central Siberia,6
and is used as both a noun and a verb. Thus, in the Evenki language, a person who
demonstrates extraordinary powers can be called a “shaman,” or a person who is
especially trained in the magical arts can be said to “shaman” someone or some
thing. In the latter use of the term, to “shaman” someone or a thing is to work
magic.

Shamanism and Healing

Anthropologists have long noted that shamanic practices are effective in diagnosing
illness and bringing about healing. The only debate rests in how they go about it. In
practice, shamans are psychologists, social analysts, and herbalists. They produce
cures; they address problematic social relationships. They concoct potions that cure
life-threatening conditions. This has all been observed by anthropologists and oth-
ers. There is no argument among anthropologists about whether shamans can heal.
Shamans have even proved efficacious in treating illnesses that resist Western med-
icine. The World Health Organization has recommended that Western physicians
work in tandem with shamans. This unites the biological efficacy of Western medi-
cine with the efficacy of shamans in understanding the source of disorders, which
may arise from social conditions.
There has been some dispute among anthropologists about whether shamanism
could be described as religion or as magic. Both religion and magic are symbolic
systems, in that they draw on multiple levels of meaning, conscious and uncon-
scious. Because symbols draw on unconscious associations, they are powerful in
evoking emotion and compelling action:

No one can escape the power of symbols. If we are not involved in the symbolic com-
plexes of religion and magic, we observe symbolic dramas on television, at the movies,
or on the sporting field. If we manage to evade the influence of symbols in our daily
lives—which is virtually impossible—we will still encounter symbols in our dreams.
(Womack 2005:1)

In psychological terms, the power of symbols arises from the emotions and from
unresolved conflicts that are stored in the unconscious. That is why symbols are
effective in healing, both in contemporary psychological practice and in the tradi-
tional practice of shamanism.
Shamans typically use symbols to describe a medical condition to their patients,
on psychological, social, and biological levels. Medical practitioners now know that
stress can produce biological illnesses. Shamans do not rely on symbols alone, how-
ever. They are the traditional pharmacologists. Shamans were the first to use phar-
macological preparations to treat biological disorders, and many of their recipes
 Calling on the Spirits 217

have formed the basis of Western medicines. Shamans use psychological, social, and
herbal means to treat illness and redress social relationships.

Shamanism: Religion, Magic, or Mysticism?

The eminent French sociologist Emile Durkheim noted that both religion and magic
are composed of beliefs and rituals. He distinguished magic from religion by stating
that magic is aimed at “seeking technical and utilitarian ends, it does not waste its
time in pure speculation” (1965:57). Durkheim writes of religion:

The really religious beliefs are always common to a determined [specifically defined]
group, which makes profession of adhering to them and of practicing the rites con-
nected with them. They are not merely received individually by all the members of this
group; they are something belonging to the group, and they make its unity. The indi-
viduals which compose it feel themselves united to each other by the simple fact that
they have a common faith. (1965:59)

For Durkheim, the defining characteristic of a religion is the social group, which is
organized around a church: “In all history, we do not find a single religion without
a Church” (1965:59). According to Durkheim, the church defines the spiritual
realm in terms of its own social organization, a view that has been translated as
“Religion is social organization projected into the heavens.”
The anthropologist Michael Harner asserts that “Shamanism . . . is not a religion.”
Harner rejects the idea that shamanism is a religion on the basis that religions
define spiritual reality for their members in negative terms. Shamanism is egalitar-
ian. As it is practiced today in stratified societies, religion is hierarchical:

The spiritual experience usually becomes a religion after politics has entered into it. So
the renewed interest in shamanism today can be viewed as democratization, returning
to the original spiritual democracy of our ancestors in ancient tribal societies where
almost everyone had some access to spiritual experience and direct revelation. We are
now restoring ancient methods to get our own direct revelations, without the need of
ecclesiastical hierarchies and politically influenced dogma. We can find out things for
ourselves. (Harner, in Bowie 2000:190–191)

Harner’s approach to the spiritual experience is known as mysticism, which is the

attempt to find direct communion with God or other forms of spiritual awareness.
Mysticism is a part of religious experience in many parts of the world, even in hierar-
chical religions that emphasize conformity to church beliefs and practices over per-
sonal spiritual transformation. Mysticism emphasizes direct experience over religious
dogma. The Sufi poet Rumi describes mysticism as direct experience rather than
dogma.
In a sense, the experience of the shaman is similar to that of the mystic. Though
the shaman’s body is still visible in the room where the healing ritual is held, his
mind is journeying into the world of spirits. Anthropologists and psychologists call
this an “altered state of consciousness.”
Harner fails to specify exactly how people in contemporary stratified societies are
“restoring ancient methods” to gain “direct revelations,” but one “ancient method”
is the use of hallucinogenic drugs. Use of hallucinogens by shamans is not the same
218 Chapter 11

as recreational drug use. Traditional shamans undergo years, or even decades, of

instruction from experts who have demonstrated their ability to negotiate with spir-
its. This expertise is demonstrated by the shaman’s ability to heal. Shamans must
acquire a number of skills, including the ability to diagnose psychological distur-
bances and physical illnesses. They also typically have expertise in diagnosing social
relationships. Cross-culturally, shamanic healing techniques include practices that
restore social relationships or alleviate the negative consequences of disturbed social
relationships.
Cross-cultural research on shamanism indicates that neophytes imbibe hallu-
cinogenic drugs under the guidance of experienced members of the group. They do
not undertake unguided journeys into the spirit world, or as anthropologists put it,
into the unconscious. There are “demons” (unresolved problems) in our uncon-
scious, and there are “demons” in unresolved social relationships. An unguided
journey into the unconscious using hallucinogens can produce psychosis.

Shamans and Sorcerers

Anthropologists distinguish between shamans (healers) and sorcerers, who use their
manipulative powers to cause harm. In his classic work on the Murngin, an Aus-
tralian aboriginal group described by W. Lloyd Warner, the anthropologist writes:
“All deaths, sicknesses, certain types of bad luck, and, in general, all those occasions
on which the individual is seriously out of adjustment with his community, physi-
cally, mentally or socially, are looked upon as the effects of black magic; and in
almost every case except that of soul-stealing7 the white magician is called in to rem-
edy the situation” (1969:183). Warner describes the relationship between what he
calls the “black magician” (sorcerer) and “white magician” (shaman) as a battle:

There is a kind of warfare between the forces which do good and those which do harm
to man. The latter are related to an organized set of concrete techniques embodied in
the person of the black magician, while an entirely different set gives practical expres-
sion, in the personality of the white magician, to those forces which control the effects
of black magic. The struggle then becomes a warfare between these two types of magi-
cal personalities. (1969:183)

Shamans practice their craft in public, and people go to them to be healed. Typi-
cally, sorcerers hide their craft. Of the Azande of southern Sudan, E. E. Evans-
Pritchard writes, “It is not advisable at court [the higher ranks of Zande8 society] to
know much about medicines, other than a few old-established ones, because a
man who is found to possess a strange medicine may be suspected of sorcery”
(1976:182–183). Among the Azande, men who are suspected of sorcery are likely
to be killed. Further, all their male relatives may be killed because Azande believe
that sorcery is inherited through patrilineages.

A Zande Initiation Ceremony

Contrary to what some Westerners presume, Azande do not live in a world of magic.
They are well aware that all successful enterprises involve a degree of labor; however,
 Calling on the Spirits 219

they recognize that some results cannot be explained by effort alone: “Azande do
not suppose that success in an empirical activity is due to use of medicines, for they
know that it is often attained without their assistance. But they are inclined to attrib-
ute unusual success to magic” (1976:187).
Evans-Pritchard describes a Zande healing ceremony and instruction of a neo-
phyte. The ceremonies begin with preparation of herbal medicines by boiling a
mixture of plants previously gathered by the presiding shaman, or host. The host
is usually the owner of the homestead at which the ceremony is held. At first, the
mood of the ceremony is jovial and playful. When the water in which the plants
are boiled becomes colored from the herbs, the presiding shaman “takes the pot
off the fire and pours out the liquid into a second pot, which he places on the fire
for further boiling” (1976:91). The roots used for the mixture are saved and stored
for further ceremonies.
Evans-Pritchard writes: “At this point the [shamans] . . . rivet their attention upon
the business in hand, drop their secular conversation, and develop a noticeable
degree of concentration on the medicinal juices now boiling on the fire. This is the
first sign in their behaviour that they are dealing with magical forces”
(1976:91–92). At this point in the ceremony, the presiding shaman begins chanting
invocations for protection.
The aid of all the shamans present, and recognition of their skills, is symbolically
represented when the presiding shaman gives a portion of a paste made from oil-
bearing seeds to all attending shamans, who then consign the paste to the boiling
mixture. Thus they demonstrate their commitment to the enterprise of gaining the
aid of spirits. The presiding shaman then stirs the mixture and intones, “May no evil
fall upon me, but let me rest in peace. May I not die. May I acquire wealth through
my professional skill. May no relative of mine die from the ill-luck of my medicines;
may my wife not die; my relatives are animals, my relative is a [religious mystery],
may my [religious mystery] be fruitful” (1976:92).
Through this incantation, the presiding shaman acknowledges the danger of his
profession. The shaman pronounces a similar protective incantation over any
novice who may be present: “May your home be prosperous and may no witchcraft
come to injure your friends. May none of your relatives die” (1976:92). He then
tells the novice that his relatives are bush animals. The renouncing of relatives
appears to be aimed at protecting the shaman’s relatives and the novice’s relatives
from any malice that may be directed against them as a result of the shaman’s mag-
ical powers. The shaman adds: “If witchcraft comes here to my home let it return
whence it came. If a man makes sorcery against me let him die. If a man bears ill-
will towards my home let him keep away, and may disgruntled fellows who come
to show their spite in my home receive a nasty surprise. Let my home be prosper-
ous” (1976:92).
Each of the shamans at the ceremony stirs the mixture and makes similar incan-
tations. The mixture is then measured out to the participating shamans, who eat
what has now become a paste. The presiding shaman then cuts incisions into the
faces and chests of the attending shamans. He also makes incisions above their
shoulder blades. He rubs some of the liquid he has earlier decanted into the inci-
sions while chanting incantations of protection over them. Thus, the power and pro-
tection of the sacred potion is “imbibed” though the incisions.
220 Chapter 11

Limitations of space prevent me from describing the full ritual Evans-Pritchard

has recorded; however, symbolism of the ritual appears to be aimed at establishing
a fellowship among the shamans that provides them with mutual powers and pro-
tection.

THE “SHAMANIC CAREER”: BECOMING A SHAMAN

In his book Religion, the anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace describes the process
of becoming a shaman as “the substitution of one identity for another” (1966:145).
In other words, the body and consciousness of a potential shaman must be decon-
structed and rebuilt. Wallace writes, “[The shaman] usually undergoes . . . a . . . dra-
matic and radical religious experience, one to which he does not subject his clients”
(1966:126). Wallace cites what he calls “a classic description of the process [of
becoming a shaman] among the Zulus of South Africa” from an account by an early
missionary, Canon Henry Callaway:

The condition of a man who is about to become an inyanga9 is this: At first he is appar-
ently robust; but in process of time he begins to be delicate, not having any real dis-
ease, but being very delicate. He begins to be particular about food, and abstains from
some kinds, and requests his friends not to give him that food, because it makes him
ill . . . and he is continually complaining of pains in different parts of his body. And he
tells them that he has dreamt that he was being carried away by a river. He dreams of
many things, and his body is muddled and he becomes a house of dreams. And he
dreams constantly of many things, and on awaking says to his friends, “My body is
muddled today; I dreamt many men were killing me; I escaped I know not how. And
on waking one part of my body felt different from other parts; it was no longer alike
all over.” (Wallace 1966:145–146)

The man’s dream reflects the idea that the shaman must die to his previous life
before taking on the obligations of a shaman. His obvious psychological distress
now becomes apparent to the people who know him. Because of their concern, his
relatives and cohorts consult with diviners, who divest the initiate of his material
possessions. When the destruction of the potential shaman’s material possessions
is complete, a true inyanga appears and guides the potential shaman into a new
phase of his initiation. He tells the villagers that they have consulted false
izinyanga [plural of inyanga] and that the man has become possessed by the
Itongo, a spirit. The inyanga adds:

If you bar the way against the Itongo, you will be killing him. For he will not be an
inyanga; neither will he ever be a man again; he will be what he is now. If he is not ill,
he will be delicate, and become a fool, and be unable to understand anything. . . . Just
leave him alone, and look to the end to which the disease points. Do not give him any
medicines. He will not die of the sickness, for he will have what is good given to him.
(1966:146)

Throughout a period of years, the condition progresses from psychological discom-

forts to physical discomforts. His hair falls out, and his body becomes dry and scaly.
 Calling on the Spirits 221

He has lost a great deal of weight and has become nothing but “skin and bones”
(1966:147). At this point, the man begins to sneeze and yawn, which indicates that
he is about to be possessed by a spirit. He then begins to have slight convulsions.
The people of the village think that he will die, but he enters another stage: “He
habitually sheds tears, at first slight, and at last he weeps aloud, and in the middle
of the night, when the people are asleep, he is heard making a noise, and wakes the
people by singing; he has composed a song, and men and women awake and go to
sing in concert with him” (1966:147).
From this point, the potential shaman takes instructions from the spirits, at first
while he is asleep. He is introduced to ancient inyangas. Then he is instructed to go
to a contemporary inyanga, who administers an emetic-ubulawo. This marks the
final stage in destroying the man’s previous personality. He returns to his village,
“and he comes back quite another man, being now cleansed and an inyanga
indeed” (1966:148).
The cross-cultural literature is consistent in describing the shamanic career. In gen-
eral, shamans do not volunteer to become part of the exclusive shamanic reli-
gion/medical practice. They must undergo a special selection process and a long
period of intense training. The shaman undergoes five stages or conditions:

I. Possessing innate ability. The innate ability to become a shaman is believed

to run in families.
II. Receiving a “call from the spirits.” Not everyone in a family that has a
shamanic tradition receives the requisite “call from the spirits.” The “call”
may vary, depending on the shamanic tradition or the particular circum-
stances. The call may come in a dream, through what Western psychologists
would call a “psychotic episode,” or through a severe illness that is not treat-
able through ordinary means. This “call” must be answered. An individual
who does not answer the “call” dies or becomes psychotic.
III. Diagnosis by a shaman. In societies where shamanism is practiced, the
condition must be diagnosed by one who has already undergone the initi-
ation required of a shaman, as illustrated in the case of the Zulu, described
above. In the case of Haitian vodou, the shamanic diagnosis will name the
specific lwa, or spirit, possessing the individual. Thus, the individual under-
going the psychological “trauma” acquires a new spiritual and social iden-
tity (Womack 1993, 2001).
IV. Apprenticeship to a shaman. Cross-culturally, it is believed that an indi-
vidual who receives the “call from the spirits” must undergo the training
necessary to become a shaman. Individuals who do not receive this train-
ing “go crazy” because they do not understand what the spirit voices are
telling them. They may be misled by false shamans, who only seek power
over others rather than the insight required to heal others. The apprentice-
ship to a recognized shaman typically takes years, often as long as twelve to
fifteen years. This is approximately how long it takes to get a PhD or MD.
In the process of acquiring the skills to be a shaman, the individual takes
repeated journeys into the spirit world, or as anthropologists describe it,
“journeys into the unconscious.” In this process, the initiate acquires spirit
222 Chapter 11

helpers that guide him or her through the dangerous landscape of the
unconscious. In this sense, undergoing the training to become a shaman is
similar to the process of undergoing psychotherapy. It takes a long time to
rout the “demons” in the unconscious.
V. Becoming a shaman. After a long period of apprenticeship, the initiate
acquires skills that allow him or her to heal others. These skills must be
demonstrated to the satisfaction of others in the group. Shamans typically do
not single themselves out by announcing their “calling.” They acquire
shamanic status by relieving the symptoms of distress experienced by other
members of the group. When this occurs, shamans acquire the status of
“healer.” E. E. Evans-Pritchard writes of the Azande: “Azande insist that magic
must be proved efficacious, if they are to employ it. They say that some magi-
cians10 have better magic than others, and when they require a magician’s ser-
vices they choose one whose magic is known to be efficacious” (1976:187).

The process of becoming a shaman involves a long period of instruction, both from
the spirits and from acknowledged shamans. A shaman is not self-declared. He or
she must submit to the judgment of the most demanding court of appeal, the opin-
ion of others in his or her social group.

SHAMANISM COMPARED TO PSYCHOSIS

In teaching anthropology in Los Angeles, I often encounter students who are part of a
subculture in which a significant component use recreational drugs. Some experience
such pleasant feelings they consider it a religious experience. I have also encountered
students with such neurological damage they cannot sit still long enough to take an
exam or listen to a lecture. They may be happy when they take instant mood elevators,
but they can’t control their own lives, much less control or negotiate with the spirits.
The spirits they encounter are the projections of their own unconscious impulses. In
one incident (not in my classroom) that made the news media because it caused the
deaths of several people, a young man declared, “I am the angel of death.”
In traditional societies, such bizarre behavior would quickly lead to ostracism.
Margery Wolf describes the “uproar and agitation” in a small Taiwan community as
it considered the behavior of a young mother of three who “lurched out of her
home, crossed a village path, stumbled wildly across a muddy rice paddy. The cries
of her children and her own agonized shouts quickly drew an excited crowd out of
what had seemed an empty village” (1993:279). For a month, the community
debated whether the woman was simply crazy or had received a call from the spir-
its to become a shaman.
Ultimately, based on the advice of a senior male, the woman was considered to
be insane, in part because she was a outsider but also because her behavior did not
conform to that expected of a shaman or tang-ki: “A good tang-ki must be able to
separate his or her behavior as a tang-ki from his or her everyday behavior” (Wolf
1993:293). Both psychotics and shamans may undergo experiences not available
to ordinary members of their communities. The difference between them is that
psychotics disrupt the community. Shamans gain the ability to analyze relationships
 Calling on the Spirits 223

within the group and use that understanding to diagnose and heal social and
psychological disruptions.
Shamans are not self-declared. They must be validated by the social group in
which they practice. In 1965, the psychiatrist Ari Kiev compiled seventeen articles
written by anthropologists who had studied shamanism in indigenous groups on
six continents. In his preface, Kiev writes:

Several years ago I had an opportunity to study the healing practices and beliefs relating
to psychiatric disorders among the Vodun11 groups in Haiti. These people, although
uneducated and impoverished—in fact living on a marginal subsistence level—have
developed a therapeutically effective form of psychological treatment centered around
certain religious beliefs and rituals. Most striking was my finding that the relationship
between healer and patient in this culture appeared to parallel in a number of ways the
psychiatrist-patient relationship in Western society, despite the absence of scientific
methods and knowledge of the discoveries of modern psychiatry. (1964:xiii)

Kiev describes some common elements of traditional shamanic healing and mod-
ern psychiatry that affect the outcome of treatment:

This finding suggested the possibility that certain general features of therapeutic rela-
tionships in various cultures—for example, the hope, expectation, and faith of the
patient in the designated healer, coupled with the healer’s use of meaningful symbols
and group forces—might contribute more in therapeutic results than is ordinarily rec-
ognized in contemporary theories of psychodynamic psychiatry. (1964:xiii)

Since Kiev wrote those words, modern psychiatry (but not modern psychology) has
shifted to a predominantly biological paradigm. The patient is labeled as having a
biochemical “disorder” and then treated with drugs that target a specific neurologi-
cal pathway. The “condition” is considered to be chronic and responsive only to
drugs. This paradigm ignores the behavioral and social context of mood states.

The Psychology of Shamanism

In his foreword to Kiev’s book, the psychiatrist Jerome Frank contrasted shamanic
diagnosis and healing with that of Western biomedicine:

In nonindustrialized cultures, illness is believed to have a variety of causes, both natural

and supernatural. These causes include noxious environmental agents, the enmity of
other persons, and the disfavor of the gods, incurred perhaps by unwitting offenses
against them. All illness, therefore, arouses fear and self-doubt in the victim and disturbs
his relations with his compatriots. (1964:vii)

Frank suggests that fear and self-doubt generated by an implied offense against pow-
erful spirits may adversely affect the patient’s relationship with others, and as a
result, aggravate his condition. Therefore, the shaman must draw on a variety of
interpersonal skills to alleviate the patient’s distress:

The shaman’s role may thus involve aspects of the roles of physician, magician, priest,
moral arbiter, representative of the group’s world-view, and agent of social control. His
224 Chapter 11

success may often depend more on his ability to mobilize the patient’s hopes, restore his
morale, and gain his reacceptance by his group than by his pharmacopoeia. (1964:viii)

According to Frank, Western physicians may also draw on many of these mecha-
nisms, but they operate under a different paradigm, that of the machine:

Industrialized societies hold quite a different concept of illness and healing. We fondly
expect someday fully to comprehend the human being as a complex machine controlled
by a computer in the skull. Disease will then be merely a derangement of the machine’s
functioning produced by noxious environmental agents in interaction with inborn or
acquired vulnerabilities or errors of metabolism. . . . In this view, the physician is an
expert scientist-technician whose job is to get the body into good running order again,
and many psychiatrists dream of the day when they too can obtain triumphant cures
with pills and injections. (1964:viii)

The day that Frank asserts psychiatrists dreamed of more than forty years ago has
arrived, but it has failed to produce the “triumphant cures” Frank envisioned.
Instead, it has spawned an entirely new hierarchy of disorders: (1) environmental
factors that produce illness; (2) the manifestation of illness in individuals; (3) the
social disruption that manifestation of physical or psychological disorders produce;
(4) the social discomfort that increases an individual’s discomfort; (5) the side
effects of medications used to treat the primary and secondary symptoms of illness;
and (6) treatments required to address the social, psychological, and physical side
effects of medical interventions.
Writing in the halcyon days of the 1960s, Frank did not consider that illness
causes fear and self-doubt in all those who experience it, especially if the illness
seems life-threatening. Illness also challenges our relationships with others. As
noted earlier in this book, illness is experienced as disorder, whether it is attributed
to the work of spirits or to “little animals too small for the human eye to see,” as
one of my students put it. Invisible agents of harm, whether spirits or microbes, are
frightening. They challenge our sense of order and well-being. This is why, as Kiev
and Frank observe, the essential processes of healing are similar for both the
shaman and the physician. In some cases, contact between Western medical per-
sonnel and shamanic healers result in partnerships that benefit both.

INTEGRATING MEDICAL SYSTEMS

As Yanomamö of Venezuela and Brazil have become acclimated to interaction with

people who now occupy their region of the Amazon—through contact with mis-
sionaries, gold miners, and government workers—they have integrated their expla-
nation of shamanism with that of health-care workers from outside. The Faces of
Culture television series notes that Yanomamö shamans believe that Western health
care professionals treat the symptoms of disease, but Yanomamö treat the causes,
which are spirits. In one scene, the public health care nurse calls on a Yanomamö
shaman to treat her malaria.
Shamans do not behave like people we regard as “normal.” “Normal” people do
not go into trance or speak with beings no one else can see. And, unless they are
 Calling on the Spirits 225

trained as shamans, there is no reason “normal people” should. In his book Ecstatic
Religion, the noted scholar I. M. Lewis considers whether shamanism is a form of psy-
chosis. Based on his studies of Tungus shamans, S. M. Shirokogoroff (as quoted in
Lewis) “was careful to point out that while he judged some Tungus shamans to be
insane, many were in perfect psychological health” (quoted in Lewis 1971:182). Lewis
adds, “Similarly and more recently, the Soviet ethnographer Anisimov reports of
Evenk shamans that although some revealed hysterical neurotic characteristics, there
were also many who were extremely sober individuals” (1971:182). Other writers,
both anthropologists and physicians, have noted that, on the whole, shamans tend to
be “unusually mentally healthy” (quoted in Lewis 1971:182).
The situation is clarified by P. M. van Wulfften Palthe, former head of the Dutch psy-
chiatric service in Java, in his distinction between “schizophrenic and ‘normal’ hysteric
possession, classifying all the Balinese material in the latter category” (quoted in Lewis
1971:182 and Belo 1960:6). In his study of the Nuba of Africa, the anthropologist
Siegfried Nadel took the concept further:

Neither epilepsy, nor insanity, nor yet other mental derangements are in themselves
regarded as symptoms of spirit possession. They are diseases, abnormal disorders, not
supernatural qualifications. . . . No shaman is in everyday life an “abnormal” individual,
a neurotic, or a paranoic; if he were he would be classed as a lunatic, not respected as a
priest. . . . I recorded no case of a shaman whose professional hysteria deteriorated into
serious mental disorders. (Nadel 1946: 25–37)

Though people who do not have access to biomedicine do not share the linguistic
categories of biomedical personnel, they can observe the cause-and-effect relation-
ship of behavior, circumstances, and disease, such as in the case described earlier in
this book of the relationship between lack of vitamin A and night blindness. Heal-
ers not trained in Western biomedicine may attribute disease to spirits, sorcery, or
witchcraft (concepts alien to biomedicine) but their evaluation of cause-and-effect
can be highly accurate.
During the 1960s and 1970s, psychologists and anthropologists in the United
States began to note that shamans and other traditional healers were sometimes
able to alleviate symptoms that resisted the ministrations of physicians trained in
Western medicine. The World Health Organization has recommended that Western
medical personnel working in areas where the traditional medical practice is
shamanism establish partnerships with the shamans. This can provide a means of
bringing biomedicine to underserved populations. It can also recognize the healing
contribution of shamans, who are likely to be more familiar than foreign physicians
with the social and psychological conditions that contribute to the health care out-
come.
Perhaps one of the greatest contributions that studying shamanism can con-
tribute to the practice of medicine is the recognition that health, illness, and heal-
ing are intricately bound up in social relationships, psychological dynamics, and the
experiences that people encounter in their everyday lives. No medical practice yet
known can reverse the ravages of an unhealthy lifestyle.