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Date Posted: 14:30:01 03/06/02 Wed
Author: Macha
Subject: Shaman Information

SHAMAN, religious specialist, originally found in hunting-gathering cultures, which are loosely structured, technologically simple, and homogeneous. The word shaman is derived from a word in the Tungusic language of Siberia, one of the areas in which the classical form of shamanism is found. Several forms of shamanism have been observed in widely distributed nonliterate societies located in Central Asia, North America, and Oceania.
Although a shaman can achieve religious status by heredity, personal quest, or vocation, the recognition and call of the individual is always an essential part of that individual's elevation to the new status. The shaman, usually a man, is essentially a medium, a mouthpiece of the spirits who became his familiars at his initiation, during which he frequently undergoes prolonged fasts, seclusion, and other ordeals leading to dreams and visions. Training by experienced shamans follows.
The main religious tasks of a shaman are healing and divination. Both are achieved either by spirit possession or by the departure of the shaman's soul to heaven or to the underworld. Shamans also divine the whereabouts of game, the position of the enemy, and the best way of safeguarding and increasing the food supply. Shamans may occupy an elevated social and economic position, especially if they are successful healers.
Attempts to explain the shamans and their cures have been numerous. Some scholars have drawn parallels between shamanistic healing and psychoanalytic cures and have concluded that in both instances efficacious and therapeutic symbols are created, leading to psychological release and physiological curing (see FAITH HEALING). Several anthropologists, rejecting a theory that shamans are basically neurotics or psychotics, have suggested that shamans possess certain cognitive abilities that are distinguishably superior to those of the rest of the community. Other scholars simply explain shamanism as the precursor of a more organized religious system or as a technique for achieving ecstasy.
MEDICINE MAN, a religious specialist in some non-Western cultures, whose main function is to cure disease.
Medicine men base their healing methods on the assumption that most, if not all, illnesses are caused by supernatural power and that supernatural powers are required to cure them. The individual may fall ill because of having offended one of the gods, or through the machinations of witchcraft or sorcery, or through the unprovoked attack of an evil spirit. The task of the curer is to diagnose the disease, usually by divinatory techniques (see DIVINATION), and then to apply the spiritual remedy, such as retrieving a lost soul, removing a disease-causing object, or exorcising an evil spirit. (In conjunction with these spiritual techniques, medicine men may also at times employ physical remedies such as herbal applications or massage.)
The effectiveness of the medicine man's treatment seems negligible in light of Western medicine. Anthropologists have, however, observed that the work of medicine men occasionally has beneficial results, perhaps due to a process of psychological release and consequent physiological healing. Faith healing in Western societies may be effective through the same process
DIVINATION, practice of attempting to acquire hidden knowledge and insight into events-past, present, and future-through the direct or indirect contact of human intelligence with the supernatural. The practice was closely allied with religion among pagan, Hebrew, and early Christian peoples.
Contact with the supernatural is usually sought through a psychic medium, a person supposedly endowed with supernormal receptivity. In direct divination, the medium acquires knowledge through direct contact with the unknown. The oracle, a medium or diviner who figured prominently in the beliefs of a number of ancient peoples, including those of Babylonia and Greece, typified the mediumistic method. Oracles employed various techniques in establishing contact with divinity. Some, such as the oracle at Delphi, passed into a trance and, in this condition, uttered divine messages. Others practiced oneiromancy, or divination by dreams, and necromancy, the art of conjuring up revelations from the souls of the dead. The direct method of divination is closely approximated in much of modern spiritualism.
The accomplishment of indirect or artificial contact with the supernatural depends on the interpretation by a medium of the behavior of animals and natural phenomena, which might convey messages from the supernatural. In antiquity, common artificial or inductive means of divination were the casting of lots; haruspication, the inspection of animal entrails; and ornithomancy, the study of the activity of birds. In ancient Rome, augurs or priests performed their divination in elaborate ceremonies, called auguries, by reading auspices or omens. To determine the will of the gods, they utilized such forms of divination as haruspication, ornithomancy, and the interpretation of dreams and visions. These augurs, members of a college that existed in Rome from the founding of the city until late in the 4th century AD, exercised enormous power. No Roman would embark upon a major undertaking unless the augurs decided the auspices were favorable. The forms of inductive divination best known today include astrology; crystallomancy, or crystal gazing; bibliomancy, the interpretation of secret messages from books, especially from the Bible; numerology, the study of numbers; and the reading of palms, tea leaves, and cards.
FAITH HEALING, a process through which a person is restored to physical, mental, or spiritual health by what is believed to be the direct intervention of divine power. Faith healing can be distinguished both from scientific medicine, which treats illness with specific remedies developed through observation and research, and from prescientific medicine, which combats illness with remedies gathered from traditional lore-including, for example, the medicinal use of certain plants and herbs. Prescientific medicine, however, is often practiced by persons whose religious authority resembles that of a priest. Such medicine men or witch doctors, although they employ empirical remedies, are also thought to communicate with the supernatural agencies believed to be responsible for both illness and its cure. In this way, prescientific medicine and faith healing are related, and they are often combined within a single pattern of treatment.

So. Here's that's what I've found. Shamans were focused on more healing-divination than anything, and worked with
groups. Along with information on shamans and shamanism, which is first, I got some on medicine men, divination
and faith healing - partially because they were suggested by the articles in which I looked to find these things, and because they're related.
So... What do you guys say? A shaman for every clan, instead of a mage? Or no shaman? I'd like reasons with replies,
thank you!

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