In the governance of intangible cultural heritage (ICH), traditional rituals often fall into a paradox of institutional exhibition. The Korean shamanic rites Ssitgim-gut and Byeolsin-gut, respectively, represent the two poles of ritual institutionalization, displaying semiotic logics of original iconicity and institutional textualization. This study, based on audiovisual materials, archival...
The article examines the song genre guruu duu as a ritual phenomenon of Mongolian musical culture. Particular attention is paid to its functions in shamanic rites, court ceremonies, and collective forms of sacred communication. The semantic, structural, and historical-cultural features of the genre are revealed. The study uses an interdisciplinary approach, combining methods of ethnomusicology...
Inspired by Joel Robbins’s call for theology and anthropology to collaborate as theoretical partners, in this article, I examine the theologian Jojo M. Fung’s recent books, Sacred Sustainability, Polyhedral Christianity and Cosmic Challenges (2025) and A Shamanic Pneumatology in a Mystical Age of Sacred Sustainability (2017) from the point of view of an anthropologist. In these books, Fung...
This article explores how the Khas and Kirat peoples of the sub-Himalayan region including Sikkim, Darjeeling, eastern Nepal, and Bhutan continue to use sacred Neolithic artifacts in their shamanic rituals. Through a synthesis of archaeological evidence and ethnographic observations, it traces the integration of prehistoric stone tools such as polished axes, adzes, celts, perforated harvesters,...
In this practice-led research project, I examine the experience of feeling culturally adrift within my hybrid South Korean-Australian identity, using the aesthetic and symbolic framework of Korean shamanism and autoethnographic reflection. Core elements of Korean shamanic practices, such as ritual, water, colour and light, form primary areas of material investigation in the studio, with a...
This article examines how ayahuasca religions in Italy have reconfigured their ritual practices following the 2022 legal ban on ayahuasca, including replacing the brew with water and creating new forms of religious travel. The Amazonian psychoactive brew ayahuasca, traditionally used in Indigenous rituals and healing, is at the centre of transnational religions that have spread globally....
This report from the field in the form of a photo essay explores the shifting religious landscape of Ketokha, a village in the Chhukha district of southwestern Bhutan. Historically, Buddhist and shamanic traditions coexisted in Ketokha, negotiating varied positions of power, influence and healing. The nejom (female medium) and pawo (male medium) played pivotal roles in ritually protecting the...
Manvir Singh's Shamanism: The Timeless Religion blends vivid ethnography, global exploration, and theoretical debate to argue that shamanism is a persistent human tendency
This study aims to explore the cultural continuity of Shamanistic beliefs and practices within Turkish society living in Anatolia. The primary objective of the research is to examine how the Turks—who have interacted with various religions and cultures throughout history—have preserved and transmitted elements of their ancient Shamanistic traditions to the present day. A qualitative research...
Traditional religions have often faced decline when meeting outside forces. Their loss, however, happens in different ways. For the Ewenki people, shamanism weakened mainly because of political control and modernization. Government policies forced them to settle down and turned their sacred rituals into cultural performances. For the Sami, the decline was not caused by modernization but by...
Shamanism is one of the earliest examples of mankind’s healing modalities, beginning with African bushmen such as the Kalahari Kung. Some Africans and others still use trance dancing and medicinal substances to heal themselves and their patients, whether for free or through barter. Traditional Chinese Medicine (approximately 5,000 years old) heals the body and mind through affordable herbs or...
Latour constructs a plurality of ontologies by distinguishing various modes of existence with their own type of existent. One of these modes of existence is religion, which involves invisible “beings of religion.” Latour criticizes both psychological and (onto)theological interpretations of such beings. He distinguishes between psychogenic beings that constitute the self, and beings of religion...
Abstract The “irrational” nature of communicating with spirits in shamanic culture possesses a cultural and spiritual healing power that is difficult for modern science to match. The paradox of shamanic culture is that reason does not require us to eliminate irrational elements of emotion, mystical fantasy, and religious belief; rather, all that reason requires of us is to discursively...
This paper explores the role and identity of the Jalur Shaman within the Pacu Jalur rowing tradition inKuantan Singingi Regency, Indonesia. While the original approach adopts a historical-biographicalmethod, this revision reframes the study through a discourse-analytic lens to better interrogate how theshaman’s role, ritual language, and spiritual objects function as symbolic practices. The...
ReligionsOctober 21, 2025J.S. Kim, Yuanfei Li, Fenggang Yang
This study examined the spatial distribution of shamanic practice in contemporary South Korea, focusing on its territorial relationship with institutional religions. Contrary to portrayals of shamanism as a rural remnant or as absorbed by Pentecostal Christianity, population-adjust maps and spatial models reveal substantial concentrations in urban and peri-urban districts. Drawing on a geocoded...
This article presents findings of the study on the role and characteristics of contemporary psychedelic facilitation in shamanic and ceremonial settings, with facilitators who work alongside Indigenous shamans in their country of origin. While interest in psychedelics has increased in recent years, there is a paucity of studies that have focused on the process of facilitation within these...
ABSTRACT This commentary introduces the reader to the Siberian audio collection of the Hungarian ethnologist and researcher of shamanism Vilmos Diószegi (1923–1972). Diószegi conducted four research expeditions to southern Siberia and northern Mongolia, in 1957, 1958, 1960, and 1964, to study the shamanic traditions of Indigenous populations in these regions. During these expeditions, he...
Stein explores a vast array of world mythologies, religious traditions, and folk imagery to explore humanity’s enduring quest for completion and arrives at a vision of the dream of wholeness. To ground his theory, Stein recounts the dream of a retired psychotherapist. Here, Stein positions vocation at the center of his spiritual quest for meaning. Stein seamlessly integrates Jungian...
BACKGROUND: In recent years, the renewal of soul-centred shamanic soul retrieval theories has provided various theoretical interpretations of the shamanic soul retrieval phenomenon and has exacerbated the "explanatory gap" found in "mind-mater" dualism. However, these theories cannot explain the body-centred turn of modern Chinese shamans under the influence of the body revitalization movement...
This article examines pathogenic projectiles among the Makushi people in Guyana. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Makushi in North Rupununi, the ‘magical’ darts known as waawî are described and contrasted with accounts of similar phenomena across Amazonia. For the Makushi, waawî seem to hold an ambiguous existence as both entities and objects. As embodiments of spirit-helpers, these...