Mircea Eliade defined a shaman strictly as an ecstatic whose soul leaves his body and ascends to the sky or descends to the Underworld. If this trait were not present, said Eliade, the person was not a shaman but a healer or magician. This definition excluded African spirit practitioners from the category of shamans and had a delaying effect on the exploration of the spirituality of African healing and ritual. However, since the time of his book, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, first published (in French) in 1951, new studies of what is clearly shamanic work in Africa, have even outpaced the ethnography of shamanism in Eurasia.
The anthropologist Colin Turnbull knew, but could not fully put the matter into words. "The bodies [of the singers] were empty"-they were gone. Turnbull said that the Mbuti's songs and their sense of the forest very definitely included whatever is implied by God and Spirit.

An important aspect here is divination where objects may be collections of bones, figurines, or palm nuts, the naturally formed footprints of wild animals, or the appearance of the internal organs of a hunter's newly caught quarry. The random pushing of a pole along the ground may also be a divining test. These objects or circumstances tell the diviner the nature of the trouble the sick person is suffering, whether it is from ancestor affliction or from witchcraft, what steps the rela¬tives should take, or whether they should undertake a ritual appealing to the ancestor spirits or an anti witchcraft ritual or herbal treatment.

In divination, the practitioner feels a shaking or burning, a great sensitiveness to disturbance, and a sense of his or her tutelary spirit taking over. In a state of heightened awareness, the practitioner will put pertinent questions about the trouble in question. The diviner in the sacred state is able to reverse a downward trend in a person's life. In some cases the diviner (or oracle) may not remember anything about the séance afterwards. The diviners, therefore, are shamans; they perform extractions of harmful intrusions, reconcile a person's ancestor spirit to make him or her a guardian and protector, and may heal with herbs or physical treatments.

In ancient Egyptian , the spirit qualities of bulls and jackals are noted, the part-human, part-animal nature of gods, and the dismemberment and rebirth theme of the god Osiris. There existed knowledge of multiple souls, along with the practice of trance by priests, which brought them gifts like those of shamans.

Igbo Shamanism in Africa notes how the primary spirit entity, Agwü, empowers the "man of knowledge" (dibïa) in his craft, and how a deceased dibïa grandfather will teach a new dibïa in his dreams. At present the dibïas (now frequently women) do not treat disease so much as disorders due to lifestyle, corruption, dishonesty, and abuse. And in Hausa practices, Bori spirit doctors in Nigeria owe the efficacy of their healing and wisdom to the spirits.

Among the Hausa, Muslim and non-Muslim practices sometimes intermingle and are sometimes in opposition. In the Gungawa section of the Hausa region, shamanic mediums, often benign or trickster figures, are held in high repute, while at the same time displays of power by any of them are frowned upon.

Among the Ndembu’s, the shaman-diviner attains all the typical powers of universal shamanism: healing, interacting with the dead and other spirits, finding lost objects, bringing animals to the hunter, changing the weather, and speaking from insight and foreknowledge.

African piety toward ancestors was respected by the Greeks of the classical era as a good example to be followed. For the Akan in Ghana, humans are descended from spirits who are descended from God. The priest-mediums of the ancestor cults are called to their work by supernatural agents. In their initiation there occurs a temporary paralysis, like trance.

Among the Asante, the okomfo or priest is possessed by spirits of nature who impart the knowledge for the okomfo to cure illnesses and assist people in other ways. Similarly, in Cape Nguni, the healer-diviners are called to their professions by the ancestors. More women than men become mediums in this region of Africa.

In Mami Wata Religion" (mother of water), the deity inhabits bodies of water and is revered, along with water spirits, in the West African coastal area. Initiates are called to the priesthood through signs of being drawn to water. They then set up unique individualistic shrines to Mami Wata, incorporating non-African images and objects that were brought into West Africa by European and Indian trade and cultural contact since the fifteenth century.

The Swahili healers and Spirit Cult shows the intermingling of Islamic and pre-Islamic ways of understanding healing at all levels of the craft: contacting and treating spirits, divination, astrology, geomancy, and magic. For healing, Qur'anic passages are written on a cup or plate, washed with water, and the ter, and the water given to the patient to drink. Possessing spirits will use humans as their "chair"; the spirits are ambitious and desire fine things.

The Yaka’s have a religious view based on an awareness of the world in which everything is alive and an ecstatic communion can take place between humans, spirits, and the life world. Yaka diviners often operate within the framework of a healing church. In "Zarma Spirit Mediums," the zima is described as a holy man who variously combines spirit possession, healing, and magic through ritual in an effort to manipulate spirits.

The Marabouts variously combines divination, magic, healing, spirit manipulation, and ecstatic prayer. And the Cape Nguni’s emphasize the role of the diviner, who interprets the messages of ancestors in order to heal the patient. Herbalists also have knowledge of magic, but do not possess the occult powers of the diviner. The author notes that certain aspects of Xhosa ecstatic divination may be derived from the cosmology and shamanic practices of the Kung-such as the ecstatic healing dance.

Kung Healing, protect people from evil spirits by entering into trance. A major feature of Kung shamanic practices is the ritual trance dance, also practiced by the Xhosa, a ceremony entered into in order to placate malevolent deities; music is a key factor in the Kung trance dances.

The Akan, a Ghanaian people include the ritual to draw the deity into twins, showing how the twins are tested, fall into trance, and are finally purified.

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