Glossary
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- Shamanism
Shamans are often called "see-ers" (seers), or " people who know" in their tribal languages, because they are involved in a system of knowledge based on firsthand experience. Shamanism is not a belief system. It's based on personal experiments conducted to heal, to get information, or do other things. In fact, if shamans don't get results, they will no longer be used by people in their tribe. People ask me, "How do yo know if somebody's a shaman?" I say, "It's simple. Do they journey to other worlds? And do they perform miracles?" [...On treating illness...] A shaman might make a journey for diagnostic purposes, to get information about the person's problems from a spiritual point of view. It doesn't necessarily matter what the diagnosis is from an ordinary reality point of view. There's no simple one-to-one concordance between spiritual illness and ordinary reality illness. You can't say, "This equals that." So the shaman will often make a journey to find out what the spiritual causality is [...] The shaman restores a person's linkage to his or her spiritual power. The spiritual power is something analogous to a spiritual immune defense system, but I wouldn't make a one-to-one equivalence. It's an analog. The power makes one resistant to illness. [...] – From an interview with Michael Harner Ph.D. • Also see The Foundation for Shamanic Studies.
