Research on Uzbek folklore and dialects: practice, methodology, new approaches
May 30, 2026
Ilhomjon Darmonov
This article analyzes the system of characters in Uzbek shamanic legends from the perspective of folklore studies. The main characters found in shamanic legends – such as shamans, spirits, ancestors, natural forces, and mythological beings – are examined in terms of their literary and semantic features. The study also explains the close connection between these characters and the ancient...
Highlights in Art and Design
May 28, 2026
Yiming Sun
Although the Chinese state is officially secular, practices and beliefs often labeled as spiritual or religious have never disappeared from everyday life. In recent years, shamanism, frequently framed as distant, mysterious, and archaic, has attracted growing popular attention in China. Through an analysis of literary works, documentaries, social media discourse, and interview data, the paper...
Interdisciplinary Academic and Research Journal
May 10, 2026
Rui Zhang, Palphol Rodloytuk
Background and Aims: This study investigates the historical evolution of Ganqi Dance, a prototypical form of Shamanic Ritual Martial Dance, and its structural transformation within the Chinese ritual-music system. By decoding its triadic structure of movement–instrument–space, the research aims to elucidate how this dance form transitioned from a shamanic martial rite into a formalized...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 1, 2026
Volha Korbut Salman
preprint
This article aims to investigate the perdurable presence of shamanic archetypes across world literatures with a particular emphasis on English and Turkic narrative traditions. As a manifestation of the primordial spiritual practice, shamanism provides a solid framework for understanding the tenacious engagement of humanity with transcendental experiences, healing rituals, the search for...
International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research
April 19, 2026
Krushnakant Nagargoje, Arvind Rawat, Kirti Maurya
The origins of human spirituality extend far beyond organised religions and formal philosophical systems, emerging instead from early experiential practices embedded within indigenous cultures
British Journal of Sociology
April 11, 2026
Catherine Tan
Behind its worldly and socially conscious aesthetic, the wellness industry serves the health and fitness interests of North American and European consumers by commercializing non-Western and Indigenous healing traditions, including shamanistic practices. Explored in this paper, "American shamans" seek to heal a range of maladies by collecting traditions found outside of their own cultural...
General Section
April 10, 2026
Khinayat Babakhumar
The article is devoted to the analysis of relics of the Kazakh shamanic tradition among the Kazakh diaspora in Turkey, which was formed as a result of forced migrations from East Turkestan (Xinjiang) in 1949–1956. Based on field materials from 2023, oral testimonies, ritual texts (saryny), paremiological formulas, and narratives, the study examines the transformation of the shamanic complex in...
Religions
April 1, 2026
Xiaoshuang Liu
Mental illness has become increasingly prominent in the modern individuation process in China. Correspondingly, contemporary shamanic practices in the north of China have gradually focused on mental issues and have constructed an indigenous concept related to them: “virtual illness.” Based on many years of fieldwork conducted in the shamanic regions of the north of China, this study focuses on...
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society
April 1, 2026
Olof Ohlson
This paper develops a quadripartite panpsychist theory of shamanism(s). This fourpart framework revives and combines four theories: (i) mystical constructivism, (ii) role-taking theory, and (iii) mental imagery cultivation as a cultural practice founded upon (iv) a panpsychist philosophy of ultimate reality. I argue that this quadripartite model allows for the recognition of something ‘real’ in...
Religion and the Arts
March 31, 2026
Mi Chen
This paper examines shamanic rock art through Chi Zijian’s The Last Quarter of the Moon , a Mao Dun Prize-winning novel that portrays the spiritual world of the Evenki people. The novel’s depictions of reindeer, shamans, hunters, celestial bodies, and rivers are interpreted as religious symbols and aesthetic forms that encode ritual practices, cosmological beliefs, and spiritual communication....