Shamanism can be much more than faith healing. It can be about journeying to other dimensions. It can also be about high levels of creativity. Perhaps some of the greatest artists and musicians can be regarded as shamans.

Of course I was the one talking about near death experiences only a couple of weeks ago and I never started a post on out of body experiences. I decided that I will not do it at present because too many people on this site prefer quirky word games. I hope you get some interesting dialogue going and I don't know if you have been sent to the purgatory of the lounge already or whether you wished this discussion to be in the lounge.

Anyway, I won't bore you with my own personal interest in shamanism. But what I would say is that I think you probably need to write a bit more about your own angle and interest to get the best possible responses. But, I might be wrong as you may find that some people will write loads and I hope that they do.

The shaman is like the hunter-gatherer counterpart to the priest/medicine man of a more complex hierarchical society. Both might interpret dreams in prophetic way that might guide individual/collective action in community for weal or woe.

The impression is that they were/are medicine doctors of premodern polytheistic societies. Perhaps there was no separation between spiritual sickness and physical illness in societies which attributed causes and effects to spirits (flights of imagination that work within a mythic system).

Today religious priests, medical doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists probably carry out a comparable function of shamans in early cultures.

Within his study of the subject, Eliade proposed several different definitions of the word "shamanism". The first of these was that shamanism simply constituted a "technique of ecstasy", and in Eliade's opinion, this was the "least hazardous" definition. — Wikipedia: Mircea Eliade's Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

Millennial Shaman New Age Dream Surfers:

"Whoa! dude, what if shamans are like dream surfers, if the dream world were a legitimate domain of experience. Like what if the waves of this world and the waves of the dream world were intermixed or one in the same. Whoa! bro, in that case, let's go ride the waves of our dreams." :P

how can you speak of such things? Have you been to Iquitos or summats?

Well, I'll be. So shaman doesn't derive from and quite transparently mean sham??

Not even the other way around?? (No, sham is from shame.)

:gasp:

No, haven't been, but what is the significance of Iquitos or Summats with regard to millennial shamanism?

Is everyone gulping down ayahuasca in those places by way of "shamans"?

Is everyone gulping down ayahuasca in those places by way of "shamans"? — Nils Loc

not OP, however yes. the general idea is that people take part in these ayahuasca ceremonies, and the shamans serve as a sort of distinguished spiritual guide while you’re in the midst of your psychedelic experience. afterwards some shamans disclose what energy they felt from people who participated and what they should improve on or stop doing in efforts to become a better person based off of how they behaved under the drink.