Eliade's Quest for Archaic Shamanism
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Mircea Eliade was influential in popularizing the concept of shamanism in his 1951 book "Le Chamanisme". He moved the discussion of shamanism away from viewing shamans as neurotics and instead portrayed them as primal mystics. Eliade was part of the Traditionalist movement which sought a return to more "archaic" forms of spirituality. His universalizing view of shamanism appealed to the counterculture of the 1960s. Later critics argued Eliade generalized too much and emphasized local, indigenous definitions over a universal "shamanism" concept.
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Eliade's Quest for Archaic Shamanism
- 1. Quest for the Archaic: Mircea Eliade and His Writing the Book of Shamanism
- 3. Eliade: Traditionalism and Shamanism Andrei Znamenski University of Memphis, TN
- 4. Recollections of Eliade Paul Firnhabe Viljandi, Estonia
- 5. The Birth of the metaphor • Shamanism: a metaphor introduced by eighteenth-century German/Russian Explorers of Siberian to describe tribal spiritual practitioners in Siberia • “Classic shamanism”: northern Asia and Northwestern North America • Until the 1960s the phenomenon was of little interest outside of anthropology scholarship. • Expression “shamanism” was rarely used prior to the 1960s
- 6. Evolving Views of Shamanism: Enlightenment • shamans as frauds/jugglers
- 7. Evolving Views of Shamanism: “Medical” View • Shamans are neurotics/hysterics/epileptics (1890s-1960s) • Hysteria Cum Demonomania
- 8. “Arctic Hysteria” into Shamanism • Severe northern environment leads to neurotic behavior (geographical determinism) • Polar societies are haunted by hysteria (generalization on the basis of limited facts) • Females are especially prone to hysteria (a tribute to Victorian psychology/medical science) • Shamans manifest hysteria in its extreme
- 9. Ake Ohlmarks (1939): Mapping “Classical” Shamanism
- 10. Ake Ohlmarks (1939): Mapping “Classical” Shamanism
- 11. Evolving Views of Shamanism: Romantic Idealization (1960s onward) • Shamans as people of incredible ecological and spiritual wisdom, will help to heal Western society (1960s to present)
- 12. Mircea Eliade (1907-1986): away from the “clinical” approach • Shamans are not neurotics • Shamans as primal mystics and cultural heroes • Away from Eurocentrism • Universal archetypes of shamanism • Extended the expression of shamanism to South America, Australia, pre-Christian Europe
- 13. Mircea Eliade, 1930s-1940s • “Soil” nationalism, folk Christianity • Dislike of Western (Judeo- Christian) civilization • Dissertation on yoga (1933) – Yoga sprang not from Vedic tradition but more ancient spiritual tradition
- 15. Eliade and his book • Le Chamanisme (1951) • Not an expert in shamanism • Yet decided to write his treatise. Why? – Quest for the most archaic patters of religion (primordial) – “my duty is to show naïve, awesome, and tragic glory of archaic ways of being”
- 16. Traditionalism • Rene Guenon (1886-1951) • Conservative intellectual movement in in interwar Europe • Crusade against modern world • Modernity – the fall of humankind • Away from Judeo-Christian tradition • Romantic search for the most archaic spirituality • Archaic=authentic
- 17. Traditionalism • Interest in non-Western spirituality – Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, • Interest in folk Christianity • Interest in esotericism, occult • Interest in mythology
- 20. Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998): spiritual seeker and writer
- 21. Quest for primordial American edition (1964) Academic bestseller To “poets, dramatists, literary critics, and painters” Coming at the right time: Critique of Western civilization in demand again (1960s onward) Correct the bias of Eurocentrism (“fascist” to “multiculturalist”) •
- 22. Quest for primordial • Going beyond Hinduism, Buddhism…. • Shaman as the link to the archaic • Ritual reestablishment of a lost connection to primordial •
- 23. Quest for universal blueprints •
- 24. Eranos – gathering place
- 25. Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Ake Hultkrantz moved in the same direction
- 26. Empowering spiritual practitioners in nature religions • Before the 1960s: medicine men, medicine women, spiritual juggles, witch doctors, wizards, sorcerers, and magicians • After the 1960s: shamans • The appeal of expression “shaman”: non- western, indigenous, gender-neutral
- 27. Zeigeist of the 1960s’-1990s • Distrust of Western Civilization • Distrust of positive science • Multikulti • Idealization of non-Western and pre-Christian “wisdom” • Environmentalism – tribal people as stewards of nature
- 28. Learning from Eliade: Michael Harner’s “Core Shamanism” • The Way of the Shaman (1980) • Digesting tribal traditions from worldwide • Teaching universal “core” blueprint of shamanism • Individualism
- 29. Learning from Eliade: Witches into shamans • Michael Harner, “The Role of Hallucinogenic Plants in European Witchcraft” (1973) • Carlo Ginzburg (UCLA) – Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath (1991) – Benadante
- 30. Post-modern critique of Eliade and Harner, 1990s • Away from generalizations • Attention to the unique, particular, individual (e.g. Michael Taussig) • subjectivity • From “shamanism” to “shamanisms”; shamanka? • Desire to use local indigenous definitions for what we call shamanism
Editor's Notes
- I became interested in the topic in 1998 when I was doing research in Alaska. I was going to board a hydroplane to fly to a remote Athabaskan Indian community in south-central Alaska. I was approached by two persons, who found out from my friend that I would be going there. One was a real estate agent, another one was a health worker from the University of Alaska Health Center. During the conversation the real estate egent told me that he healed himself with the shamanic therapy. They several times alerted me that they would be very interested that I retrieve information on shamanism. When I informed them that I was going to study the Native American community that long time ago came to consider Russian Orthodox Church their indigenous church, they seemed to be disappointed. The woman lamented that Western civilization made such powerful inroads in native society that they forgot their native traditions. At the end of the talk, the woman invited me to a local Unitarian church where they had a shamanic drumming session. Since at that day I was to take that plane, I could not use her invitation. Next year, during my trip to the Altai in southwestern Siberia, I was sitting and waiting for my train at a small railroad station. Suddenly my eye caught a toilet water called “Shaman” that was on sale in a local kiosk. The water turned out to be a Chinese remake of the French brand name. The list of examples can be continued. I can name the recent album of Sansana “Shaman.” To make the long story short, I became interested in exploring why and how the idiom of shamanism became so popular in Western culture. Concluded the contract with a publisher, and now I am writing a book on the same topic. First, let me to briefly give you a generic description what in literature they mead by shamans and shamanism. At first, the phenomenon was applied only to indigenous spiritual practitioners in Siberia and northwest coast of North America. Then it became expanded to other tribal people (South America, Africa, Australia, and even to pre-Christian Europe). Now the word is frequently used to replace such old expressions as “medicine man” or “medicine woman,” “sorcerer,” “witch,” “seer,” “prophet.”
- I became interested in the topic in 1998 when I was doing research in Alaska. I was going to board a hydroplane to fly to a remote Athabaskan Indian community in south-central Alaska. I was approached by two persons, who found out from my friend that I would be going there. One was a real estate agent, another one was a health worker from the University of Alaska Health Center. During the conversation the real estate egent told me that he healed himself with the shamanic therapy. They several times alerted me that they would be very interested that I retrieve information on shamanism. When I informed them that I was going to study the Native American community that long time ago came to consider Russian Orthodox Church their indigenous church, they seemed to be disappointed. The woman lamented that Western civilization made such powerful inroads in native society that they forgot their native traditions. At the end of the talk, the woman invited me to a local Unitarian church where they had a shamanic drumming session. Since at that day I was to take that plane, I could not use her invitation. Next year, during my trip to the Altai in southwestern Siberia, I was sitting and waiting for my train at a small railroad station. Suddenly my eye caught a toilet water called “Shaman” that was on sale in a local kiosk. The water turned out to be a Chinese remake of the French brand name. The list of examples can be continued. I can name the recent album of Sansana “Shaman.” To make the long story short, I became interested in exploring why and how the idiom of shamanism became so popular in Western culture. Concluded the contract with a publisher, and now I am writing a book on the same topic. First, let me to briefly give you a generic description what in literature they mead by shamans and shamanism. At first, the phenomenon was applied only to indigenous spiritual practitioners in Siberia and northwest coast of North America. Then it became expanded to other tribal people (South America, Africa, Australia, and even to pre-Christian Europe). Now the word is frequently used to replace such old expressions as “medicine man” or “medicine woman,” “sorcerer,” “witch,” “seer,” “prophet.”
- To show the students a replica of a Siberian drum.
- The shamans as “creative madman,” “wounded healer.” To mention Africa (I. Lewis, shamanism and possession). “We forgot about Africa.” The attractiveness of the shamanism concept – the shaman is not a slave possessed by spirits, but the master of these spirits. The books became adopt more often than not the titles “shaman” Examples: M. McDonald “Witchdoctor” (1959) into “Shaman” (1972). A 1929 book titled as “Medicine Men” was reissued as “Shamans” and so forth. It seems that the expression allowed to avoid the negative value and gender connotations. Although some radical feminists say prefer to use the word “shamanka” to avoid as they think the “shaman” although in the Tungus language the root has nothing to do with the word “man.”
- Searching for archaic man inside of us, revival of tradiitonal archetipyes. Judeo-Christian culture intorudced linear vision, disripued the cycle traditon, threw us into history. Judeo=Chrsian tradiitona gradually eliminated the sacred from our life. Our tsk is to eliminate linear time. Desire to return to archetypes, very lcose to Jung. Very closely began to ersonate with the New Age folk. Eliade did nto change his idea. Simply what was popukar with ight-wing tradiitonalists now became popular with the left wing envrnmentalist and new age
- Searching for archaic man inside of us, revival of tradiitonal archetipyes. Judeo-Christian culture intorudced linear vision, disripued the cycle traditon, threw us into history. Judeo=Chrsian tradiitona gradually eliminated the sacred from our life. Our tsk is to eliminate linear time. Desire to return to archetypes, very lcose to Jung. Very closely began to ersonate with the New Age folk. Eliade did nto change his idea. Simply what was popukar with ight-wing tradiitonalists now became popular with the left wing envrnmentalist and new age
- Searching for archaic man inside of us, revival of tradiitonal archetipyes. Judeo-Christian culture intorudced linear vision, disripued the cycle traditon, threw us into history. Judeo=Chrsian tradiitona gradually eliminated the sacred from our life. Our tsk is to eliminate linear time. Desire to return to archetypes, very lcose to Jung. Very closely began to ersonate with the New Age folk. Eliade did nto change his idea. Simply what was popukar with ight-wing tradiitonalists now became popular with the left wing envrnmentalist and new age