All the characteristics of the ‘Muram Kulukki’ song are close to the characteristics of shamanism. Connecting with the spiritual world, reaching a trance state through the repetition of music and dance, spiritual treatment for healing, unity and togetherness of the community, and deep respect for the forces of nature are all reflected in this ceremony. Through this, not only is the spiritual...
This article examines the spread of Islam in Transoxiana during the 9th–12th centuries, focusing on the incorporation of Buddhist and shamanic practices into Islamic rituals, as evidenced by historical sources. Within the framework of acculturation and cultural transformation, these traditions were gradually adapted to Islamic festivals, Sufi practices, and popular customs. The findings...
Kajian ini menganalisis konsep shamanism dari perspektif Hadith dan mengkaji fenomena perbomohan kontemporari di Kelantan. Permasalahan utama yang diteliti adalah kewujudan amalan perbomohan yang melibatkan ritual dan jampi yang tidak jelas sumbernya daripada al-Quran dan Hadith, sering kali berpotensi mengandungi unsur syirik. Ini menimbulkan cabaran besar dalam membezakan antara pengubatan...
This research explored whether anomalous ‘dimensional-slip’ experiences—reported by an allegedly haunted woman named “Nell”—would systematically map to distinctive features of various transcendental spaces discussed in spiritual and psychological traditions. A two-part content analysis using ChatGPT-4o compared the phenomenology of Nell’s written accounts (n = 4) to an inventory of 32 classic...
María Sabina became well known around the world for her great shamanic power and because people were intrigued by her and her relationship with hallucinogenic mushrooms, or niños santos (saint children), as she called them. The present chapter analyzes María Sabina’s prayers/chants – nijmi – in her mother tongue, Mazatec. Their anaphoric structure, commonly used by poets of this tradition, was...
Background and Aim: Manchu shamanic music, a vital component of Northeast China’s intangible cultural heritage since its 2010 designation, faces existential threats from declining rituals, urbanization, and global cultural influences. Rooted in Tungusic traditions, it integrates spiritual communication through pentatonic scales and ritual practices, yet risks erosion due to aging practitioners...
Until Wilson Harris, the Guyanese/British fiction writer and theorist, made his ubiquitous mark within the literary tradition of the Anglophone Caribbean in 1960 with the publication of his first major novel, Palace of the Peacock, few Anglophone Caribbean writers and theorists in the first half of the twentieth century focused on non-normative concepts of gender and sexuality in their fiction....
This paper attempts to characterize the key stages in the evolution of Western academia’s construction of shamans and shamanism as well as elucidate those factors that have underpinned particular constructions. In doing so, it draws on the writings of the late French philosopher Michel Foucault, and particularly on such Foucauldian motifs as episteme, knowledge, and power. A central argument...
This paper examines Ted Hughes’ shamanic poetics through the lens of artificial intelligence, arguing that his animal totems (Crow, Pike, The Jaguar) anticipate contemporary tensions between organic consciousness and machine intelligence. By analyzing Hughes’ ritualistic verse structures alongside AI text generators’ ‘hallucinations,’ the study reveals how both systems employ fractured...
This study aimed to investigate the practical effects of symbolic imagery on shamanic religious rituals, emotional modulation, belief deepening, and alterations in the state of consciousness. Thirty participants were recruited and randomly assigned to either a control group or an experimental group for comparative investigation. The results indicated that participants in the experimental group...
The article presents a semiotic analysis of shamanic attributes and clothing of the Evens, documented during a 2024 expedition to the Srednekolymsky District of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The study focuses on a children’s shamanic set (khamasak teti kungangi) and a ritual headdress (khamasak avun) from the collection of the Berezovsky Evens. The author examines the symbolic language and...
This study investigates how human will is articulated, negotiated, and reimagined within the discourses about Shamanism of Northeast China, with a particular focus on user-generated content from the Douyin platform (Chinese TikTok). Drawing on the data collected from comments between 2020 and 2024, this research employs a triangulated methodology integrating Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)...
May 31, 2025The Society Of Korean Literature, Eunwoo Lee
In recent years, Korean TV entertainment programs have increasingly incorporated shamanism as a central theme, creating new forms of shamanistic expression within popular culture. This study analyzes how shamanic content is represented in three representative programs—Buchaedosah, Knee-Drop Guru, and Ask the Bodhisattvas—and examines their narrative structures and cultural implications. Despite...
Drawing on extensive fieldwork and a critical review of textual sources, this article offers a systematic typological and symbolic analysis of the ritual functions, attire, and implements of the four categories of shamans in Khorchin, Inner Mongolia-khondon, Shamanic, laichin, and gürdem. The study demonstrates that Khorchin shamanic material culture fuses nomadic traditions, Buddhist...
This study is dedicated to a comparative analysis of the differences between the ritual implements and attire used in Mongolian shamanism and those found in Tibetan Bon religious temples. By conducting an in-depth investigation into the ceremonial tools and clothing of these two cultural traditions, the research aims to uncover the symbolic meanings and cultural values embedded in them. Drawing...
Since China’s accession to the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2004, private shamanism, centered around the sacred belief of “connecting heaven and earth”, has for the first time been incorporated into the national heritage management system with legal legitimacy, becoming regulated public heritage on the condition of avoiding religious attributes....
The article focuses on “ethnological video games”, defined as video games which are developed on the basis of ethnographic and folkloric material. The particular focus is on the kind of ethnological games which contain representation or simulation of shamanistic practices. Among them are Mooseman based on Komi-Permyak and Finno-Ugric mythology, Never Alone based on Iñupiaq folklore, and the...
This article explores the social and therapeutic roles of banjhakri, a supernatural shamanic entity whose presence extends from West Central Nepal to parts of North Eastern India. It draws exclusively upon a rich cross section of extant scholarship to offer a composite assessment of folklores and symbolism surrounding banjhakri. As such, the article discusses his physical and behavioural...
Indigenous shamanic therapeutics have often been reductively construed as either religious or psychopathological phenomena within (neo)colonial academic discourses. Cutting across these reductive interpretations, this article presents a culturally embedded, decolonial exposition of Angami Naga shamanic aetiology and treatment through an ethno-literary analysis of two short stories from Avinuo...
The paper interweaves the concepts of two contemporary thinkers in order to describe the ongoing socio-environmental crisis. Based on the books Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital by Jason W. Moore (2015) and The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert (2013, 2015), I identify the common, or at least approximate, meanings...