HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL

Thursday, April 05, 2007

hey hope you guys enjoyed the 'informative talk' on Paganism in my previous entry! hahax today's topic shall be more familiar to you i hope, hahax

Shamanism

-a range of traditional beliefs and practices concerned with communication with the spirit world

- its practitioners claim the ability to diagnose and cure human suffering and in some societies, the ability to cause suffering

- forming a special relationship with, or gaining control over, spirits

- shamans credited with ability to control weather, divination, the interpretation of dreams, astral projection, and traveling to upper and lower worlds

- intermediary between the natural and spiritual world, who travels between worlds in a state of trance

- once in the spirit world, the shaman would commune with the spirits for assistance in healing, hunting or weather management

- seen as communicating with the spirits on behalf on the community, including spirits of the dead

- shaman may be initiated via a serious illness, by being struck by lightning and dreaming of thunder to become Heyoka, or by a near-death experience, or one might follow a 'calling' to become a shaman

- shaman blessed with spiritual powers

- found more widespread in less economically developed countries

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