Manvir Singh: Was Shamanism the First Religion?

About this episode

Anthropologist Manvir Singh explores the significance of shamanism as a potential first religion and its implications in modern society.

Shamanism may be humanity’s oldest religion – a tradition found across cultures, where healers slip into unseen realms, speak with spirits, and bring back knowledge from beyond the visible world. But in a modern, scientific age, these practices can seem like little more than superstition. But what if they reveal something deeper in human experience? Anthropologist Manvir Singh set out in search of answers. On a remote island in Indonesia, he lived with the Mentawai people, watching as their shamans — the sikerie — drummed, danced and entered trance, their tattooed bodies painted in turmeric. In these altered states, they appeared to move between worlds. How does an empirically-minded scientist make sense of such experiences? Singh combines immersive fieldwork with cross-cultural research into shamanic traditions, past and present. He calls shamanism a “timeless religion,” one that may go back to our earliest ancestors — and still lives on in the world’s major religions. Along the way, he asks a provocative question: Was Jesus a shaman? — Manvir’s book, Shamanism Manvir’s article in The Guardian on the debate over the history of psychedelics in indigenous cultures — 0:00 The…

People in this episode

Hosts: Anne Strainchamps, Steve Paulson

Guest: Manvir Singh

Topics covered

• shamanism
• religion
• anthropology
• altered states
• cultural practices

Keywords

• shamanism
• religion
• Manvir Singh
• Indonesia
• spirituality
• healers
• trance
• Jesus
• psychedelics

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Shamanism, The Guardian

Places: Indonesia, Brazil, Siberut

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