On Shamanism

About this episode

This episode explores the role of shamans in society, their practices, and the psychological mechanisms behind their effectiveness.

Shamanism has been lurking in the background of our discussions since day one, and our “jingle” is just one of us playing a shaman drum. It was high time we had an episode on it. What is a shaman? We follow Manvir Singh in boiling it down to people who 1) enter non-ordinary states and then 2) engage with unseen realities to 3) provide a service to their community. They have long served an important role in community helping their fellow humans deal with uncertainty, and as a result crop up in pretty much every human society at some point. They tend to lead very different lifestyles to the rest of their community, othering themselves. Is it a LARP, or do the shamans actually believe what they’re doing? It’s hard to tell, probably a bit of both. They know they’re performing a role, and the better their performance, the more they consciously fulfil the role of shaman, the more effective they are. The service they offer is not a million miles from a placebo, giving their clients the belief that they are going to get better, and like placebos the cures of the shaman are often effective. And the idea that actions, as opposed to words, can be a lie is quite a modern one. In fact putting…

Topics covered

• shamanism
• community service
• non-ordinary states
• belief systems
• placebo effect

Keywords

• shaman
• community
• performance
• placebo
• non-ordinary states

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