Quest for the Archaic: Mircea Eliade and His Writing the Book of Shamanism

Eliade: Traditionalism and ShamanismAndrei ZnamenskiUniversity of Memphis, TN

I became interested in the topic in 1998 when I was doing research in Alaska. I was going to board a hydroplane to fly to a remote Athabaskan Indian community in south-central Alaska. I was approached by two persons, who found out from my friend that I would be going there. One was a real estate agent, another one was a health worker from the University of Alaska Health Center. During the conversation the real estate egent told me that he healed himself with the shamanic therapy. They several times alerted me that they would be very interested that I retrieve information on shamanism. When I informed them that I was going to study the Native American community that long time ago came to consider Russian Orthodox Church their indigenous church, they seemed to be disappointed. The woman lamented that Western civilization made such powerful inroads in native society that they forgot their native traditions. At the end of the talk, the woman invited me to a local Unitarian church where they had a shamanic drumming session. Since at that day I was to take that plane, I could not use her invitation. Next year, during my trip to the Altai in southwestern Siberia, I was sitting and waiting for my train at a small railroad station. Suddenly my eye caught a toilet water called Shaman that was on sale in a local kiosk. The water turned out to be a Chinese remake of the French brand name. The list of examples can be continued. I can name the recent album of Sansana Shaman. To make the long story short, I became interested in exploring why and how the idiom of shamanism became so popular in Western culture. Concluded the contract with a publisher, and now I am writing a book on the same topic.

First, let me to briefly give you a generic description what in literature they mead by shamans and shamanism. At first, the phenomenon was applied only to indigenous spiritual practitioners in Siberia and northwest coast of North America. Then it became expanded to other tribal people (South America, Africa, Australia, and even to pre-Christian Europe). Now the word is frequently used to replace such old expressions as medicine man or medicine woman, sorcerer, witch, seer, prophet.

Recollections of EliadePaul FirnhabeViljandi, Estonia

I became interested in the topic in 1998 when I was doing research in Alaska. I was going to board a hydroplane to fly to a remote Athabaskan Indian community in south-central Alaska. I was approached by two persons, who found out from my friend that I would be going there. One was a real estate agent, another one was a health worker from the University of Alaska Health Center. During the conversation the real estate egent told me that he healed himself with the shamanic therapy. They several times alerted me that they would be very interested that I retrieve information on shamanism. When I informed them that I was going to study the Native American community that long time ago came to consider Russian Orthodox Church their indigenous church, they seemed to be disappointed. The woman lamented that Western civilization made such powerful inroads in native society that they forgot their native traditions. At the end of the talk, the woman invited me to a local Unitarian church where they had a shamanic drumming session. Since at that day I was to take that plane, I could not use her invitation. Next year, during my trip to the Altai in southwestern Siberia, I was sitting and waiting for my train at a small railroad station. Suddenly my eye caught a toilet water called Shaman that was on sale in a local kiosk. The water turned out to be a Chinese remake of the French brand name. The list of examples can be continued. I can name the recent album of Sansana Shaman. To make the long story short, I became interested in exploring why and how the idiom of shamanism became so popular in Western culture. Concluded the contract with a publisher, and now I am writing a book on the same topic.

First, let me to briefly give you a generic description what in literature they mead by shamans and shamanism. At first, the phenomenon was applied only to indigenous spiritual practitioners in Siberia and northwest coast of North America. Then it became expanded to other tribal people (South America, Africa, Australia, and even to pre-Christian Europe). Now the word is frequently used to replace such old expressions as medicine man or medicine woman, sorcerer, witch, seer, prophet.

The Birth of the metaphorShamanism: a metaphor introduced by eighteenth-century German/Russian Explorers of Siberian to describe tribal spiritual practitioners in SiberiaClassic shamanism: northern Asia and Northwestern North AmericaUntil the 1960s the phenomenon was of little interest outside of anthropology scholarship.Expression shamanism was rarely used prior to the 1960s

To show the students a replica of a Siberian drum.

Evolving Views of Shamanism: Enlightenmentshamans as frauds/jugglers

Evolving Views of Shamanism: Medical View Shamans are neurotics/hysterics/epileptics (1890s-1960s)Hysteria Cum Demonomania

Arctic Hysteria into ShamanismSevere northern environment leads to neurotic behavior (geographical determinism)Polar societies are haunted by hysteria (generalization on the basis of limited facts)Females are especially prone to hysteria (a tribute to Victorian psychology/medical science)Shamans manifest hysteria in its extreme

Ake Ohlmarks (1939): Mapping Classical Shamanism

Ake Ohlmarks (1939): Mapping Classical Shamanism

Evolving Views of Shamanism: Romantic Idealization (1960s onward)Shamans as people of incredible ecological and spiritual wisdom, will help to heal Western society (1960s to present)

Mircea Eliade (1907-1986): away from the clinical approachShamans are not neuroticsShamans as primal mystics and cultural heroesAway from EurocentrismUniversal archetypes of shamanismExtended the expression of shamanism to South America, Australia, pre-Christian Europe

The shamans as creative madman, wounded healer. To mention Africa (I. Lewis, shamanism and possession). We forgot about Africa. The attractiveness of the shamanism concept the shaman is not a slave possessed by spirits, but the master of these spirits.The books became adopt more often than not the titles shaman Examples: M. McDonald Witchdoctor (1959) into Shaman (1972). A 1929 book titled as Medicine Men was reissued as Shamans and so forth. It seems that the expression allowed to avoid the negative value and gender connotations. Although some radical feminists say prefer to use the word shamanka to avoid as they think the shaman although in the Tungus language the root has nothing to do with the word man.

Mircea Eliade, 1930s-1940s

Soil nationalism, folk ChristianityDislike of Western (Judeo-Christian) civilization Dissertation on yoga (1933)Yoga sprang not from Vedic tradition but more ancient spiritual tradition

Eliade and his bookLe Chamanisme (1951)Not an expert in shamanismYet decided to write his treatise. Why?Quest for the most archaic patters of religion (primordial)my duty is to show nave, awesome, and tragic glory of archaic ways of being

TraditionalismRene Guenon (1886-1951)Conservative intellectual movement in in interwar EuropeCrusade against modern worldModernity the fall of humankindAway from Judeo-Christian traditionRomantic search for the most archaic spiritualityArchaic=authentic

TraditionalismInterest in non-Western spiritualityBuddhism, Hinduism, Taoism,Interest in folk ChristianityInterest in esotericism, occultInterest in mythology

Julius Evola (1898-1974)

Henry Corben (1903-1978)

Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998): spiritual seeker and writer

Quest for primordialAmerican edition (1964)Academic bestsellerTo poets, dramatists, literary critics, and paintersComing at the right time:Critique of Western civilization in demand again (1960s onward)Correct the bias of Eurocentrism (fascist to multiculturalist)

Searching for archaic man inside of us, revival of tradiitonal archetipyes. Judeo-Christian culture intorudced linear vision, disripued the cycle traditon, threw us into history. Judeo=Chrsian tradiitona gradually eliminated the sacred from our life. Our tsk is to eliminate linear time. Desire to return to archetypes, very lcose to Jung. Very closely began to ersonate with the New Age folk. Eliade did nto change his idea. Simply what was popukar with ight-wing tradiitonalists now became popular with the left wing envrnmentalist and new age

Quest for primordialGoing beyond Hinduism, Buddhism.Shaman as the link to the archaicRitual reestablishment of a lost connection to primordial

Searching for archaic man inside of us, revival of tradiitonal archetipyes. Judeo-Christian culture intorudced linear vision, disripued the cycle traditon, threw us into history. Judeo=Chrsian tradiitona gradually eliminated the sacred from our life. Our tsk is to eliminate linear time. Desire to return to archetypes, very lcose to Jung. Very closely began to ersonate with the New Age folk. Eliade did nto change his idea. Simply what was popukar with ight-wing tradiitonalists now became popular with the left wing envrnmentalist and new age

Quest for universal blueprints

Searching for archaic man inside of us, revival of tradiitonal archetipyes. Judeo-Christian culture intorudced linear vision, disripued the cycle traditon, threw us into history. Judeo=Chrsian tradiitona gradually eliminated the sacred from our life. Our tsk is to eliminate linear time. Desire to return to archetypes, very lcose to Jung. Very closely began to ersonate with the New Age folk. Eliade did nto change his idea. Simply what was popukar with ight-wing tradiitonalists now became popular with the left wing envrnmentalist and new age

Eranos gathering place

Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Ake Hultkrantz moved in the same direction

Empowering spiritual practitioners in nature religions Before the 1960s: medicine men, medicine women, spiritual juggles, witch doctors, wizards, sorcerers, and magiciansAfter the 1960s: shamansThe appeal of expression shaman: non-western, indigenous, gender-neutral

Zeigeist of the 1960s-1990sDistrust of Western CivilizationDistrust of positive scienceMultikultiIdealization of non-Western and pre-Christian wisdomEnvironmentalismtribal people as stewards of nature

Learning from Eliade: Michael Harners Core ShamanismThe Way of the Shaman (1980)Digesting tribal traditions from worldwideTeaching universal core blueprint of shamanismIndividualism

Learning from Eliade: Witches into shamansMichael Harner, The Role of Hallucinogenic Plants in European Witchcraft (1973)Carlo Ginzburg (UCLA)Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches Sabbath (1991)Benadante

Post-modern critique of Eliade and Harner, 1990sAway from generalizationsAttention to the unique, particular, individual (e.g. Michael Taussig) subjectivityFrom shamanism to shamanisms; shamanka?Desire to use local indigenous definitions for what we call shamanism

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