Although Eurasia is considered to be a prominent region for shamanism by most scholars, well integrated studies based on integrated fieldwork only started to come out after World War II, and those mainly in Russian. Referring in this case to the former USSR and present day Russia one can observe that for example  Uralic and Altaic peoples are geographically dispersed in widespread regions of ‘Eurasia’, not only due to their nomadic lifestyle but also to a geopolitical impulse to gain or expand their new territories at various points in their history. The first such expansion of the Eurasian people to Europe was recorded in the fifth century. The Europeans were shocked by the invasion of the "Hun" people, as they were called, with high mobility and military skills, some of whom eventually estab­lished the Bulghar Khan Empire in the mid-Volga region of eastern Russia, an empire that lasted from the seventh to the thirteenth century. The Orkhon inscriptions (the earliest stone inscriptions in the Turkic language, found in the Orkhon River valley in Mongolia) and other Turkic inscriptions also attest to the historical presence of the early nomadic empires in Mongolia, which lasted from the seventh to the ninth century. These pastoral nomads formed great empires, which occasionally united the region and dominated neighboring territories. These Turkic inscriptions also recorded the spread of Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and Nestorian Christianity among these Turkic-Mongolian peoples.

The movement of the traders and goods along the Silk Road from early Roman times also brought Buddhism from India to East Asia through Central Asia. A complex history of conflicts and coexistence (or even mutual borrowings) resulted' from the interaction between these major world religions and indigenous shamanism in Eurasia. The shamanism of the Turko-Mongol peoples was in general enriched by incorporating beliefs and symbolism of the imported world religions. Islam was also introduced in Central Asia around the eighth century and solidified much of Turkestan under Islam. Yet Islamic monotheism did not completely wipe out shamanism either, as indicated by some of the entries. (See "Sufism and Shamanism," for example.) In particular, the mystical experiences of Sufism can be associated with shamanic practices of trance. Most Mongols have adopted Tibetan Buddhism, a process that began in the seventeenth century. Russian Orthodox Christianity also spread, as Russian power began to penetrate into the region under czarism.

During the period when these regions were dominated by the former Soviet Union and China, shamanism, like other religions, was suppressed and persecuted by the Communist regimes. As some of the nations under the Soviets were granted independence in the 1990s after the fall of Soviet Communism, shamanism and Buddhism revived under the new governments, which have tended to promote their national solidarity by encouraging the traditional cultures of pre-Soviet times. As for the newly independent Central Asian republics, Islam is still suppressed by the Soviet-educated ruling class who fear Islamic resurgence, and shamanism continues to be buried as a countryside phenomenon under the disguise of Islamic veils.

The above included so called ‘shamanism’, practiced by Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus peoples. Although ethnological and archaeological studies bring out rather complex features of Eurasian shamanism, and contrast Eliade's narrow definition (influenced by his Traditionalist background) of North Asian shamanism based on his idea of ecstasy. Aspects of shamanism in Eurasia however also include the gender of shamans, use of specific musical instruments (drums or string instruments), collaboration of human or animal spirits, different cosmological considerations, and various types of ritual performances during the day or at night, tundra and taiga zones.

The deer  including the moose or elk, wild reindeer, and the Siberian maras (among others) provided strength to the shaman during his or her spirit journeys as helping spirits. Throughout the area, animals and birds play a central role in shamanic beliefs and practices.

There have been  more academic studies done on Mongolian shamanism than on other forms by  Russians but also  Japanese, the former colonial rulers of the region. Both "Mongolian Shamanic Texts" and "Mongolian Shamanic Traditional Literature" draw on a body of literature produced by ethnographers in the field over the last century-documents that are readily available and that present a valuable picture of shamanism during the time period prior to the repression of shamanism in the twentieth century, specifically in the 1930s by the Soviets.

Her one should mention that  there are also some strange distinctions that have been made like ‘Black' Shamans, `White' Shamans" and "Yellow Shamans", and have in fact changed over the course of time. The original distinctions between white shamans (related to the Upper World, good spirits) and black shamans (associated with the Lower World, powerful evil spirits) do not always hold. Some cultural groups consider black shamans more powerful because of their association with more powerful deities; others consider white shamans more efficacious, since they have contact with the spirits of the Upper World. In addition, although yellow shamans (a term only used in Mongolia, with its association with Lamaism) were considered to have Buddhist aspects in their practice, currently the term white shaman is used in Mongolia for such practitioners. In fact  the categories of white and black or yellow shamans were initially created by the scholars in the field and are not used by the local people.

Today it is possible to do fieldwork  Russia without the stringent Soviet controls, and Buryat Mongolian shamans can be found in the eastern Dornod province of Mongolia, as well as in the Buryat Republic of Russia, around the area of Lake Baikal where the above pictures where taken. The shamanism of the Buryat in Mongolia contains a number of elements similar to that of the south-Siberian population-the mythological background, the world concept, the important role of the initiation process and the types of shamans. Currently, Buryat Mongolian shamans have become very prominent in the regeneration of shamanism among the Buryat in Russia, and many of the concepts and practices such as the initiation rites relating to fertility and rebirth (father, mother birch trees, nests with eggs in the trees, a grove of eighty-one birch trees in the ritual place), have become important components of Buryat shamanism in Russia.

Kalmyk Shamanic Healing Practices that can be observed in the same region of Russia contain for example Oirat Mongols who migrated in the seventeenth century to Russian lands between the Volga and the Don. Despite their great distance from their original homeland in western Mongolia, they have maintained connections to their shamanic past, overlaid with aspects of Buddhism, a process that had already taken place prior to their emigration from Mongolia.

Then there are the  Turkic speakers also called "Tuvan Shamanism." that  currently is undergoing a revitalization. The shamanistic complex in Tuva partakes of many Siberian and Mongolian elements.

Also Khakass shamanism is closely related to Tuvan shamanism, since the republic of Khakassia is adjacent to the northern border of Tuva (in southern Siberia), and in recent times, the regeneration of shamanism in Khakassia has been somewhat influenced by the revitalization of shamanism elsewhere in Russia, particularly Tuva.

Neo-Shamanic influences from the United States also are evident among some of the new shamans. Yet there was a vital shamanic tradition in Khakassia prior to the Russian Revolution, and many of the cosmological beliefs and practices were very similar to northern Siberian shamanism. The Teleut, a small Turkic population who live in villages in the Kemerovo area of western Siberia, are also a Turkic people with a highly developed shamanic cosmology, which to some extent still survives, though there are no longer any practicing shamans. They divide the universe into five worlds and have a celestial world consisting of sixteen spheres. They had typical Siberian concepts of the shamanic gift, the "shaman's sickness," and dismemberment during an initiation journey. The shamans coexisted in Teleutian society with a number of other ritual experts who healed, told fortunes, and had special knowledge. And many features of the Teleut shamanic cosmology and attributes are quite similar to those of other neighboring Siberian and Central Asian groups.

Then there are those cultural groups that have a strong overlay of Islam, which has influenced their practice of shamanism, unlike the Mongolian and Tuvan groups, where Buddhism is the predominant religion and has coexisted with shamanism since the sixteenth century. These Central Asian Turkic people are cattle breeders, and their shamans traditionally tend to be male. Others found that shamanhood was primarily a women's occupation among the sedentary Central Asian peoples, although both men and women could perform as shamans. These Turkic shamans use stringed instruments for their rituals, and their helping spirits often have Islamic names such as jinn or pari. Their rituals takes place after dusk, and during the séance shamans sometimes climb up a hanging rope to the Upper World. Hence it seems that Turkic Central Asian shamanism has preserved some shamanistic traditions similar to those of Siberia and Mongolia.

Some modern Turkic folk healers, on the other hand, draw more from the aura of the Islamic healing tradition and Russian parapsychology, or New Age spirituality. It is notable that Islamic prayers and blessings and recitation of the Quran are very much a part of Central Asian shamanistic practice.

Uyghur ritual practices,  concentrate on healing and related rituals. These practices are indivisible from Islam and the Muslim way of life. The influence of Sufism, an ecstatic form of Islam, is important, as well as the influence of what may be called a domestic cult, focused on the spirits of dead relatives and close family. Exorcism ceremonies and healing rituals designated to persuade harmful spirits to leave the body of the ill person, known as "making the pari dance," employ, among other elements, incantations to Islamic saints, other exorcism formulae, and Arabic prayers consisting of verses from the Quran.

The Kirghiz people are a Turkic-speaking nomadic group living in the Tian-shan and Pamir mountain areas, and here are also Central Asian pre-Islamic and Islamic features. Currently there are both male and female shamans among the Kirghiz; they heal patients with the aid of ancestral spirits and, while in trance, often use a stringed instrument to summon spirits or whips to chase away evil spirits.

In contrast to Turkic Central Asian Shamans, Tajik shamans show rather different features. The Tajik are an Iranian people with an agricultural background, in contrast to the nomadic pastoral Turkic peoples. Tajik shamans are mostly women, and their helping spirits are human in form, not animal. They perform various rituals in the daytime and use a tambourine without a drumstick for their séance.

Finally instead of a bibliography that in context of this overview would have to be rather extensive more usefull I think is to conclude  with selected litterary examples  that might in turn also help towards a future revision of what  are definitions of ‚Shamanism’ a word that is not unlike something as ‚Gnostic’ or today, ‚New age’ (what is in a word I mean).

I start with an older  document ( already critical of Shamanism; note .the first sentence in the account) that described  shamanism in the 17th century, untainted as it appeared  with Lamaist conceptions. Here the  English translation of the text as it appeared in Walter Heissig's A Mongolian Source to the Lamaist Suppression of Shamanism,1953 (p.503-506):

"A certain Ingdaqai, at the time when staying at the Aru Khangghai (Mountains), his father having advanced very far in the perfection of the erroneous and sinister knowledge, said to his father as he did not manifest his power, `It certainly would be good if you would show a mind compassionate to all creatures because you have become so skillful in your power.

Upon these words the father replied, Although I have found so much power, it is painful to walk around being of old age. With the termination of this life approaching, it is very important that I should protect you! If you, at the time that my life will come to an end, when I unfeelingly breath my last, will find the right place and inter and worship me (there)-1 shall perform things in later days which are of benefit to you

The son Ingdaqai received these words attentively.

One month later the old father fell very sick all of a sudden; the sickness becoming more and more serious, lie called for his son and asked "Have you forgotten my instructions?" The son replied that he had not forgotten. Thereupon lie said, "That is good!" and his breathing stopped, the colour of his face changed into that of earth, he str~tehed his fingers up to his mouth, his mind became confused and he drew his Blast gasp.

Thereupon, in the way ordered by his father, the son carried away at the same hour the dead body, and after he considering (the order) had carried it away, all by himself he laid the corpse on the top of a flat boulder at the southeastern declivity of the Red Cliff (Heissig's note #147 which comments on the importance of elevated places as burial sites, attested to in archaeology of stone-age burials) which towered up there all by itself. He made an offering and worshipped, addressing him as "Protecting Genius of the Ancestor!" Then he returned.

From then on the son Ingdagai made offerings to him of one wooden bowl of tea, one wooden bowl of water and one wooden bowl of milk-wine brandy on the first, seventh and ninth day of each new moon, saluted and worshipped him. After a time of about three years had passed while he worshipped, clouds and fog gathered around the peak of the Red Cliff, rose and dispersed. The son showed devotion after it had clouded up in this way. He made offerings of lamps and incense and he worshipped driving away the obstacles.

Thereafter the spirit of the deceased old father allied itself in friendship with the masters of the place. The years passed and, his power increasing, he learned the incantation; making his own the prayer of Atagha Tngri he came to be of profound knowledge and power, making hail to fall, thunderbolts to descend and  or the purpose of saving all creatures of this world Have we descended from Ataya Tugri".

Many of the people heard what they were saying and told each other that these must be wonderfully powerful tutelary spirits.Having inquired about the situation, Ongghot and Edzi, these two said, "We can protect all of you if you become pious and make sacrifices offering the primes of tea, milk-wine brandy and water!"

Upon these words all the people were aware of the former evil. All the people were frightened.They called them Shaman (böge) and Shamaness (niduyan-iduyan) and made offerings by sprinkling tea, milk-wine brandy and water that protection be given.

Thereafter they fashioned images, making the body from the fur of a one-yearold black lamb and the eyes from blackberries and calling them "Tutelary Spirit Edzi" and "the Dark Tutelary Spirit" they made offerings to them... (Heissig,1953:503-506)

As Heissig (1953:506) himself pointed out, this passage shows the importance of the ancestral spirit in the actual origins of Shamanism, and that this ancestral spirit was worshipped initially because it promised protection against dangers of sickness and evil spirits confronting people and their livestock. Later, this ancestral spirit, because of its ability to counteract the forces of illness and bad will, was invoked through the mediation of the shaman who was the only link of communication with these forces from the natural and spiritual world. The shaman, in his mediatory role, was therefore also cast into the role of a healer, offering medical help for illness or impending death, because through him was the only means of communication with those natural and supernatural forces who manifested themselves as diseases. Thus, as Heissig states (1953:506), "the position of Shamanism and its interpreter-the Shaman-stems frdii tee's most urgent need of a primitive economic society for preservation and protection of the means of subsistence: health, fire, food, game and livestock as well as human labour, i.e. children."

As for 20th century author's theoretically, ithas been  tempting to consider the more mystical views of scholars such, as Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and Mircea Eliade. Shamanism itself can be understood even in the terms laid out by Edward B. Tylor, where he defines the two necessary dogmas of Animism as firstly concerning the tout of individual creatures, capable of continued existence after the death or destruction of the body and secondly concerning other spirits upward to the rank of powerful deities. In a similar manner, Lévy-Bruhl focuses also on the mystical, ecstatic aspect of Shamanism-his view is that natives, primitive people, live in a world which "comprises an infinity of mystic connections and participations." In part, these understandings of Shamanism speak to a certain core in the belief system-the necessary connection to the spirit world, the presence of ancestral spirits with whom communication can be established after their departure from this world, the varying levels of power that can emanate from these spirits, and the emphasis noted of "participation", which can also be interpreted in light of the role of the shaman who is able by his actions and spiritual connections to forge a link between people on the earth and the spiritual world so that human beings, through the medium of the shaman, may have contact with spiritual beings.

Mircea Eliade's approach to Shamanism also analyzes it as a religion of ecstasy and magical flight. He basically would prefer to classify Shamanism as a type of mysticism rather than a specific religion, and from this point of view states that Shamanism can be found within a number of religions "for shamanism always remains an ecstatic technique at the disposal of a particular elite and represents, as it were, the mysticism of the particular religion".. However, he also points out that, different from the mystics in Christianity, shamans in trance can cure people, accompany the dead to the spirit world, and serve as mediators between humans and their greater or lesser gods. He also points out that "this small mystical elite not only directs the community's religious life but, as it were, guards its soul." He continues to say that "the shaman is the great specialist in the human soul; he alone `sees' it, for he knows its `form' and its destiny". Clear as these constructs may be in illuminating certain aspects of the-nature of Shamanism, it is his suggestion that Shamanism is connected to the "soul" of the community that is of the greatest interest here because the focus of this book is not on the nature of Shamanism itself, but rather on the nature of its re-generation within specific historical and social contexts and the connection of Shamanism to a specific locale.

Here the writings of Durkheim and his emphasis on the role of religion within society are relevant. Analyzing religions from the point of view of a simple formtotemism in Australia-he concluded that primitive humans realized they needed society to survive and that, being totally dependent on society (which was the clan), the Australians viewed it as something sacred, a social actuality embedded in the symbol of the totem. Further, Radcliffe-Brown has stated that magic and religious rituals exist because they are part of society's maintenance mechanisms in their establishment of fundamental social values. The point is that these theorists stress not only a certain rational basis to human society and thought, but also a closely interwoven connection between the development of belief systems and the structural needs of society.

Theorists such as Max Weber, R. H. Tawney and Talcott Parsons have developed this line of thought, noting the interplay between religion and society in terms of economics and social stratification. Some of the issues considered by these theorists include the degree of secularization, the kinds of religious traditions and orientations, and the nature of power distribution in the secular aspects of society-variables which all can be noted to be closely interrelated. For example, Max Weber has pointed out the varying responses to religion dependent upon the specific social strata niche occupied, as well as differences developing from the nature of the state's power structure itself (whether dominated by a priesthood or secular political officials).

Moreover, the orientation of this book also takes into account the theoretical position of Soviet ethnographers who adopted a Marxist methodology in analyzing religious phenomena. "This means, above all, that we approach religion from a materialist position, i.e. we seek the `earthly roots' of religious beliefs. Furthermore, Marxism defines with precision the place of religion among other phenomena connected with human activity: religion is a form of social consciousness". Leaving aside the ideological questions raised by Marxism with its placement of religion within superstructure phenomena and its emphasis that "religion is only a fantastic (twisted, irrational) reflection of the people's material life which takes the form of images of a supernatural world", the theoretical stance developed here follows Basilov's thinking that "Religion develops, like any other kind of ideology, as a result of processes going on in society. Changes in religious beliefs and customs are at best reflections of changes in economic, social or family relations. The history of religion can not be separated from the history of society".

Having determined that the major line of our argument moves along the axes of religion embedded in the context of society, and in the response of religion to social processes, the theoretical positions which follow lead to a core concern presented here-the location of shamanic practice within the social context. The analyses of Caroline Humphrey regarding interactions between Shamanism and the founding of the Mongol state, and the relations of Shamanism to the Manchu state, both at its court core and tribal periphery, essentially argue for a context-driven study of Shamanism following in the footsteps of Max Weber. Her argument is that "inspirational religious practices have never been independent of context”. Her question regarding the role of shamanic belief is relevant: "why did the (Manchu) emperor decide to revivify shamanism when he could have simply substituted Confucian ritual?". Her general answer to this is that, following the historical practices of the Mongol state in its formative 12th and 13th century aspects, inspirational (shamanic) practices were imbedded in the formation of Inner Asian states and even after bureaucratization of the state had occurred, marginal, non-institutionalized practices were necessary for legitimation of the center.

In the same mans r, the central Imperial Court was important for the maintenance of identity \and self-definition of peoples on the periphery. She states that "shamanic and inspirational practices were the contexts for the making of such links" (1994:193). She suggests that the Manchu Qing Dynasty (1611- 1911) which supported a quasi-shamanist cult until the 20th century at the Imperial Court was able to internalize a whole range of external spirits and make them ancestral, giving impetus to a patriarchal system of Shamanism, which genealogies supported state legitimacy. Further, the expansion of the edges of empire and the loss of Manchu cultural identity was seen as a threat to the legitimacy of Manchu rule. The need to revivify Shamanism was therefore a regeneration of social identity. (A lesson for our times and, indeed, borne out by the experiences of the peoples in the post-Soviet republics-see especially the chapter on the Kalmyks). She points out that the Manchu clans had become bureaucratized and had lost social vitality and their sense of identity whereas the more peripheral "Ur" Manchu living further from the center of government and more in consonance with their clans, had retained better preservation of culture. Hence the emperor insisted on the importance of clans and Shamanism as significant aspects of Manchu identity.

In general, she shows that at the time of the formation of the Mongol state, there was a merging of religious and political (military) authority: those people who knew Heaven's' Will also were the contenders for political and military rule. In the later Manchu state, at a time of rapid military expansion in the 18th century, Manchu identity itself became an issue and Shamanism was encouraged by the Emperor as a context to strengthen this identity by recourse to ancestral powers. Marginality and the maintenance of ethnic identity can be seen as having an association with Shamanism as a binding force. Humphrey noted "the imperial (Manchu) Dynasty had recourse to the periphery in its attempt to define its identity and reaffirm its power". The shamanic, ancestral spirit of the border peoples was an idiom of self definition for the Manchu.

Further insight on the role of marginal societies or peoples on the borders of a more legitimized world, can be found in the work of Owen Lattimore, seminal to researchers who have followed his theoretical bent. When he describes marginal societies in the Inner Asian Frontiers of China, he is describing not only a physical area or zone occupied by these peoples, but also a cycle of nomad rule. This cycle of nomad political power consists of four stages: 1) production of a surplus of livestock and command over a large number of horse-mounted warriors, 2) use of nomad warriors to maintain a mixed state in which tribute and revenue are taken from the more sedentary subjects, 3) a third stage characterized by conflict between the different interests of the ruler: revenue or war, between the nomads living on the steppe or those who were stationed on further territory beyond the steppe and controlled the sedentary peoples and 4) finally, the fourth stage where those rulers and nobles involved in the original conquest had become too sedentary and lacking in influence and those who had assimilated the values of the conquered people enjoyed real power. In this fourth stage these tensions became intolerable, causing breakup of thztate and a return to a political condition of nomadism by the nomads at the edge of the state.. In this manner the zone or border area between steppe and China fluctuated.

The marginal zone was inhabited by steppe tribes showing admixtures of Chinese traits, and by Chinese who also had varying admixtures of steppe influences and culture. Lattimore points out that at times of crisis this marginal area was reduced, as peoples retreated respectively into the steppe or to China.

However, "during long periods of stability, on the other hand, the margin tended to become wider, and the wider it became the more it approached the status and importance of a separate order of society".. He also dotes that when the long period of stability began to deteriorate, it was the men from the border areas who understood the structure of power both in the steppe and in China who could now make use of their knowledge in a bid for power. However, those who acted were not the great chiefs of the border who would have risked too much, but the second layer of men who were willing and eager to take risks to arrive at power which had otherwise eluded them.

When we look at the data of Tuvinian history, with its cycling between Mongolian, Chinese, Turkic, and finally Russian power, we can see an interesting example of what happens in a "marginal, border" state to the construction of religion. Although the cycle of nomad political power is not strictly analogous to the phenomena of shamanic revitalization in Kalmykia, Buryatia and Tuva, there are similarities, as will be seen, in the relationship between the more marginal religion of Shamanism and the more established, canonical religion of Buddhism with interplay and borrowing of aspects between these religions until ultimately, as Lattimore states, "the margin tended to become wider (read Shamanism for margin), and the wider it became the more it approached the status and importance of a separate order of society". The tracing of the interplay between Buddhism and Shamanism is another counterpoint in this book, but more than that, it is important to understand how a more marginal religion may have actually better survival characteristics than a more established religion. The material in the following chapters will show that what has facilitated and sustained the survival of Shamanism is its attachment not to an involved canon of philosophical thought, but to nature and locale.

These theoretical considerations of marginal societies, how they interact with the more powerful state, and how they generate their own forms of political power have been carried on in further work done by Nazif Shahrani in his study The Kirghiz and the Wakhi of Afghanistan: Adaptation to Closed Borders and in a more recent chapter on "Ethnic relations under closed frontier conditions: Northeast Badakhstan" in a collection of essays entitled Soviet Asian Ethnic Frontiers 1979 by McCagg and Silver. We can substitute here a theoretical consideration of how a more marginal, less-powerful religion interacts with a more dominant religion in the effort to regenerate itself and form a new meaningful entity.

The ideas brought forward by Lattimore have proven to be fruitful in terms of analyzing the impact frontier or border conditions have not only on the development of a political entity, but also how these conditions bear on questions of maintenance and renaissance of ethnic identity. It is for these reasons that theoretical considerations of the construction of marginal societies and the loci of power within them are useful for an understanding of Shamanism in those republics of Russia during the Soviet period and currently.

Forces which create the fluctuations and dynamics of political state developments are often counterbalanced by, on the other hand, the maintenance or revitalization of ethnic identity when a weaker power is caught up in this process. Movements of religious revitalization or renaissance may become extremely important as a means of establishing or maintaining such ethnic identities in addition to offering hope and sustenance at a time of crisis or a time of positive change. Weaker ethnic groups, surrounded by an increasingly powerful state, have experienced religious revivals which respond to a deep-felt need. Wallace, applying his theories of revitalization to phenomena within the North American Seneca nation, has laid out a process of revitalization which consists of five stages: I Steady State II Period of Increased Individual Stress, III Period of Cultural Distortion when individuals turn to a variety of cultural substitutions for stress reduction such as alcoholism, intra-group violence, disregard of kinship and sexual mores, and Stage IV, the Period of Revitalization which essentially checks the preceding period of anomie and chaos, and brings reform to the society. Following cultural transformation, a final fifth stage: the New Steady State emerges.

This period of revitalization, often a characteristically religious movement, must accomplish maze way reformulation-a restructuring of elements in the society, the prophet-leader as a guide to new rules and rituals which will bring about positive relations in the society. Wallace notes that initially the prophet has hallucinatory visions in which a supernatural being appears. This relationship between the visionary and the supernatural spirit becomes the basis of the charisma of the prophet-Max Weber's concept of charismatic leadership comes into play here-and his power over his followers (how like a shaman!).

Wallace continues to point out various scenarios of these revivalist movements: "movements which profess_ to revive a traditional culture now fallen into desuetude; movements which profess to import a foreign cultural system; and movements which profess neither revival nor importation, but conceive that the desired cultural end state, which has never been enjoyed by ancestors or foreigners, will be realized for the first time in a future Utopia". The type of religious revitalization considered in this book falls into the first category of revival; whether it may actually have some elements of the Utopia orientation in its application and _expression is open for speculation. Are people looking to develop a kind of Shamanism, expressive of ethnic identity and striving, which did not exist prior to the Soviet period? It must be noted, parenthetically, that the continued fluorescence of Shamanism in the post-Soviet period has begun to show many twists and turns, employing traditional and neo-shamanic forms. These changes, more noticeable since 1996, are not dealt with in this text.

As state, Shamanism is a religion that is dependent on, inextricably bound up with, the spirits of nature of a specific locale and often related to the spirits of a specific kinship grouping of people. The shaman acts as a member of a social community interceding for the benefit of the members of this community. Therefore, as a religion both in its ritual and in its healing practice, it can not be separated from its communal context. Its very development-emergence, re emergence, is dependent upon the existence of a social context which sustains the shaman.

Prior to the Soviet Period the shaman's practice and power was based on the shaman having inherited his gift usually through direct blood kinship with previous ancestral shamans and practicing in a specific locale. The Soviet Period was a time of severe cultural distortion  due to two aspects: the severe repression of religion and also the severe dislocation of people from their land and ancestral ties which had the effect of disrupting the transmission and practice of Shamanism by a) removing people physically from the particular locale and b) separating generations from each other so that transmission of knowledge of kinship was lost and ties to kinship were weakened (deliberately done by the State to foster allegiance to the greater USSR and to weaken local and familial ties) and c) loss of transmission of shamanic knowledge and loss of indigenous language and special language used in shamanic incantations (unlike Buddhism which has a deep philosophical base and is an institutionalized, written, non-local religion and hence can be reconstituted from any authentic Buddhist source).

Wallace views the period of revitalization  as a restructuring of elements in society through the medium of the prophet-leader, a shaman, who is a visionary, achieving contact with spiritual beings and hence, in the form familiar to Shamanism, has become a guide to new rules and rituals for his society. At this point, it is of interest to notice that he says here that since this movement is revolutionary in nature it will encounter resistance and hence need to use various strategies of adaptation such as doctrinal modification. From the data gathered in these three republics, it will be seen that we are not dealing, in any instance, with a prophet-leader as such, but with individuals who are trying to find practical ways to reformulate individual shamanic practice so that it meets the current needs of the community. The shamans who can do this are succeeding on an individual, case by-case basis and thus creating a revitalization of Shamanism as a whole phenomenon. One has not defined the stages of revitalization itself although  some conclusions can be drawn from the varying stages of development recently completed or/and  in progress in the different republics.

The problem is to look at what have been the various strategies of adaptation noted on the ground in the new re-emergence of Shamanism and what explanation can be found for them. Given the interlinked nature of shamanic practice and society, we can look at the fieldwork data and set up a continuum which shows that where the disruption of religion and especially society was the greatest (Kalmykia), there the strategies of adaptation have been the furthest removed from pure Shamanism, and the most linked with Buddhist practice. Where the disruption of religion and society was the least (Tuva), Shamanism has been able to re-emerge in a form more purely shamanic, and closest to its original pre-Soviet form.

We may ask a further question: why did by  the end of the 20th century  the weaker religion took on elements of the stronger? Or do we also find that the stronger, more institutionalized, religion is taking on elements of the weaker, but more indigenous belief system? This returns us to concepts of marginal societies developed by Owen Lattimore. He noted that in periods of crisis the marginal zone was reduced, but that in periods of stability it tended to become wider, "and the wider it became the more it approached the status and importance of a separate order of society.” So as an overview of  thoughts on the subject during the 20th century one can generally say that  shamanic practice where  looked at as equivalent to a marginal zone and that in order to search for and maintain stability, it needs to establish itself in status and weight as a separate order of society and hence needs to connect itself with something that will lend it that weight and validity. Plus that a religion which is local, kin-associated and not written may take on aspects of the more organized, institutionalized religion under conditions of disruption and stress. It remains not to be said that from a point of view of a theoretical approach this is in need of complete revision by today, something that cannot be part of this article but will be done in a separate entry on eSocial Science within the next few weeks.

go back to the Shamanism Central Page:

 

For updates click homepage here