The present work is the first to embrace shamanism in its entirety, while placing it within the perspective of a general history of religions. With a few notable exceptions, in fact, the shamanic bibliography has so far neglected an interpretation of this phenomenon from the perspective of the general history of religions, whose task is, in this case, to integrate the findings of ethnology, as well as psychology and sociology. Shamanism is one of the primordial techniques of ecstasy; it is at once mysticism, magic and religion. The author makes an in-depth analysis of it, examining its different aspects and clarifying the various mythical-religious assumptions that underlie it. A careful examination is devoted to shamanic methodology, the various forms of initiation, rituals, and shamanic manifestations among different peoples, races and tribes, not failing to draw a comparison highlighting their common features. The shaman is a magician, a ‘medicine-man’, who has the ability to heal and perform phakiric miracles, like all primitive or modern magicians. Ecstatic experience is predominant in all his operations, and it is mainly in this sense that the author studies him in this work. Shamanism corresponds to a magical speciality involving the mastery of fire, magical flight, and so on; therefore, although every shaman is, among other things, a magician, not every magician can be qualified as a shaman. The same applies to healing: every ‘medicine-man’ is a healer, but every shaman uses his own particular technique. Finally, in ecstasy, the shaman goes through a trance during which it is believed his soul can leave his body to undertake celestial ascents or infernal descents. In his dealings with ‘spirits’, then, the shaman is able to communicate with the dead, demons and ‘nature spirits’, without becoming their instrument.
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