From Shamans to Sorcerers

Abstract

This paper presents an empirical model for interpreting evidence of ritual practices and alterations of consciousness, derived from a cross-cultural study. The four main types of religious practitioners—the healer complex (shaman, shaman/healer and healer), the medium, the priest and the sorcerer/witch—are described in terms of their characteristic roles, experience of altered states of consciousness (ASCs) and relation to subsistence strategy and socio-political conditions. Shamans, found worldwide in foraging societies, are replaced by shaman/healers, healers and mediums with the intensification of agriculture, warfare and political integration. All of these religious practitioners use alterations of consciousness for healing and divination. Priests, who exercise dual secular and sacred roles and represent a hierarchy of lineage power, are found in agricultural societies with political integration beyond the local community. Whereas priests carry out collective rituals for the general protection of the community, the sorcerer/witch, who emerges in societies with high levels of political integration and judiciary but low levels of community integration, represents the devalued side of the supernatural involving immoral acts causing illness, destruction and death. This empirically derived model of religious practitioners provides a framework for inferring the nature of religious activity in the past. As a case study, I apply this model to identify the types of magico-religious practitioners found in imperial Roman society and to explore their subsequent influence on the religious traditions of Christianized Europe.