What is a Shaman and What Does He Do?

Shamans can be viewed as mediator between the earthly realm and the afterlife. Shamans are also viewed as healers. The connection between these two roles is intricate and complicated, while at the same time quite clear. Shamans, after all, take the position that the world in which human being live are subject to the dark powers from the otherworld; powers that most human cannot even begin to understand, yet that are not beyond the reach of the soul as it travels from this life to the next.

In order to become a shaman, there must be a period of self-discovery and self-determination. It is important that the potential shaman arrive at the acknowledgement that he possesses certain specific gifts not available to others by himself. This recognition typically arrives in the form of visions, dreams or other metaphysical signs and guideposts. Very often the realization that one may be a shaman comes on the heels of a significant crisis of death; sometimes it is only at the point of near-death that illumination arrives. Once this recognition of the ability to become a shaman arrives, there is a long process of apprenticeship that may take up to several years.

Once someone finally became a shaman, their role in primitive cultures that had not yet developed sophisticated and institutionalized religions straddled the gray area between medicine and spirituality. It was the shaman's duty to study someone who had become ill with the purpose of determining what had caused them to weaken to such a state that their bodies could be invaded by malevolent spirits. Unlike western religions that blamed bizarre behavior on demons related to a larger form of evil that existed alongside the forces of goodness, whenever someone in the tribe would fall sick the suspicion was cast toward a very real entity. The most obvious culprits would be those within the tribe who had a grudge against the sick person, or more likely someone from a warring tribe, although in many cases the blame was attacked to unseen practitioners of the dark arts like witches or warlocks.