What is it about?

The article examines various options that scholars have explored in their efforts to construct a history of shamanism. Recognizing Mircea Eliade’s promise that such a history lies in the near future, the article then explores the important ways in which this has been undertaken. It specifies four such ways: with prehistoric rock art, the origins of cultural myths, memory studies, and movements of cultural resistance. Ultimately resisting each of these four options while paying particular attention to the case of early Chinese shamanism, its concluding sections recognize the work of Mircea Eliade and Roberte Hamayon as providing two alternative pathways that might lead into possible constructions of this history, and it then attempts to locate a third way between them.

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Why is it important?

I introduce the significance of what we understand by the "history of shamanism," and question if such a history is even possible. I then clarify and evaluate four primary ways that the history of shamanism has been presented in scholarship in the field, showing their various strong points and weak points. I then attempt to construct an alternative understanding of the history of shamanism, which I direct to the phenomenon of Chinese shamanism.

Perspectives

Liken many people, the phenomenon of shamanism fascinates me. I specialize in Chinese religions, a field in which the question of Chinese shamanism has been hotly contested: many scholars claim that shamanism never existed in China, while others claim that it is the core foundation of Chinese religiosity. However, because what we understand by shamanism involves our different understandings of "the history of shamanism," I felt it worthwhile to take a step back from modern debates on Chinese shamanism to explore the different ways that people have envisioned the history of shamanism more generally. Writing this study just illuminated so many new angles from which to more deeply think about the topic, and I hope it can suggest new and interesting ways for you to more deeply think about shamanism and its place in the history of world civilization.

Thomas Michael
Beijing Normal University

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Does Shamanism Have a History? With Attention to Early Chinese Shamanism, Numen, September 2017, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/15685276-12341477.
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