Paper 90 Overview: Shamanism—Medicine Men and Priests

The evolution of religious practices progressed from simple rituals based on fear to complex systems involving intermediaries between humans and the divine. Shamans, medicine men, and priests emerged as these intermediaries, claiming special abilities to communicate with spirits and gods when ordinary people believed they could not do so themselves. This pattern established religion as a secondhand experience for most believers, a pattern that continues in many modern religious systems.

Religious development follows a trajectory that begins with primitive fear of the unknown and ultimately culminates in the recognition of God's universal love. Between these extremes lies the long era of shamanism, where special individuals positioned themselves as essential go-betweens for humans seeking spiritual connection. These shamans evolved into formalized priesthoods that created elaborate rituals, some of which became burdens on society while others contributed to cultural stability and the preservation of valuable traditions.

Religious observances evolved through several stages, beginning with simple practices like placation and avoidance, then progressing to exorcism, coercion, conciliation, and finally to more sophisticated concepts like sacrifice, atonement, and redemption. As people developed increasingly complex ideas about supernatural realms, religious rituals likewise became more elaborate and required specialists—medicine men, shamans, and eventually priests—to perform them correctly.

In this advancing religious consciousness, primitive humans came to believe that ordinary people could not communicate with spirits or gods. Only exceptional individuals could gain the attention of supernatural beings, which meant religion became an indirect experience for most believers. Most organized religious systems on earth still operate at this evolutionary level, where intermediaries stand between worshippers and the objects of their devotion, representing a middle stage between primitive fear-based religion and the higher understanding of God's universal love.

The shaman occupied the highest position among medicine men, serving as the ceremonial leader and focal point for all evolutionary religious practices. In many societies, shamans outranked war chiefs, marking the beginning of religious dominance over governmental affairs. The shamanic tradition evolved over time, with some tribes having both the earlier shaman-medicine men who functioned as seers and the later-appearing shaman-priests who performed more formalized religious functions. In many cultures, the office of shaman eventually became hereditary, creating family lines of religious specialists.

People with unusual mental or physical characteristics were often selected as medicine men because these differences were interpreted as signs of spirit possession. Many shamans experienced epilepsy or hysteria, conditions that were believed to facilitate communication with supernatural beings. While some shamans sincerely believed in their spirit possession, others deliberately practiced deception and trickery to maintain their status. The profession developed formal requirements, including a ten-year apprenticeship of hardship and self-denial. Shamans used various methods to impress their followers, including drugs, hypnosis, ventriloquism, and sleight-of-hand. The profession naturally selected for shrewdness, as failed shamans were often demoted or killed if they could not explain their failures, while clever performers thrived and gained influence.

Spirit conjuring involved precise and complex procedures comparable to modern church rituals conducted in ancient languages. Early humans actively sought superhuman assistance and revelation, genuinely believing that shamans received divine communication. Shamans primarily relied on the power of negative suggestion in their work, with positive suggestion being a much more recent development. They specialized in various functions including rain-making, healing diseases, and crime detection, though their principal purpose was not merely healing but comprehending and controlling life's hazards and uncertainties.

The practices considered "black art" when performed by common people were labeled "white art" when conducted by recognized religious authorities like priests and shamans. As time passed, all supposed supernatural contact was classified as either witchcraft or shamancraft, with witchcraft eventually becoming associated with the devil. Shamans placed great faith in signs, omens, astrology, and dream interpretation as revelatory methods. Weather shamans persisted throughout history, and astrologers repeatedly returned to prominence despite official banishment. True prophets occasionally emerged to challenge shamanic practices, just as scientific progress gradually undermined superstition. Shamans established their authority through various means, including naming ceremonies, circumcision, and presiding over burials, often accumulating significant wealth and maintaining multiple wives as part of an emerging aristocratic class.

Ancient humans believed that both themselves and their material environment were directly controlled by ghosts and spirits. This worldview explains why primitive religion focused so intensely on material concerns, as people tried to influence these spiritual beings who supposedly managed every aspect of the physical world. The elaborate ceremonies of ancient cults represented attempts to control the material environment, particularly to ensure health and long life, which is why shamans functioned simultaneously as religious leaders and medical practitioners.

The primitive mind developed five major theories to explain disease and death, each reflecting a stage in human understanding. First came the belief in ghost possession, where spirits caused illness by removing the soul from the body. Second was the recognition of obvious physical causes like war wounds, though even these were thought to be influenced by spirits. Third was the attribution of illness to magic and enemies with supernatural powers. Fourth came the concept of sin and divine punishment for violating taboos. Finally, humans began to recognize natural causation, a scientific understanding that progressively freed people from superstitious fear. This evolution of thought demonstrates how humans gradually shifted from supernatural to natural explanations of suffering, though remnants of earlier beliefs persist even in supposedly advanced societies.

Ancient human life was largely devoted to disease prevention, with religious practices serving as prophylactic measures against illness and misfortune. Despite the errors in their theories, early peoples applied their beliefs wholeheartedly, and their faith in these treatments constituted a powerful healing force in itself. The confidence required to recover under a shaman's care was not fundamentally different from that needed for healing under some nonscientific treatments today, highlighting the consistent role of belief in the healing process.

Primitive medical practices evolved from the initial fear and avoidance of the sick to more compassionate approaches involving treatment by designated healers. Early diagnostic methods included examining animal entrails, while treatments ranged from chanting and laying on hands to primitive surgeries like trephining the skull. Shamans developed various therapeutic techniques including massage, bloodletting, sweating, hot baths, and the use of herbs and other natural remedies. The Greeks were the first to establish truly rational medical approaches, though many effective ancient remedies lost their power when their previously secret formulas became widely known. This history illustrates how medical knowledge progressed from superstition toward science, even as elements of magical thinking persisted in health practices.

The fundamental principle of ritual was performance perfection—among primitive peoples, ceremonies had to be conducted with absolute precision to influence spirits effectively. Any error in ritual execution was believed to provoke divine anger rather than blessing. As human thinking evolved, shamans gradually developed into formally trained priests responsible for directing increasingly complex rituals. These elaborate ceremonies, while serving certain social functions, ultimately became burdens that hampered progress and cultural advancement over thousands of years.

Ritual served to sanctify custom and perpetuate myths while preserving social and religious traditions across generations. From simple beginnings, rituals expanded to include special words, pilgrimages, purification ceremonies, and elaborate initiation rites. Priests evolved through various specialized roles—oracles, singers, dancers, weathermakers, and temple custodians—before becoming formal directors of religious worship, often claiming exclusive authority as intermediaries between humans and the divine. While priestly classes historically impeded scientific and spiritual progress in many ways, they also contributed to cultural stability and social cohesion. True religious leaders, as distinct from ritual specialists, have provided valuable guidance toward higher realities and genuine spiritual advancement.