The most comprehensive analysis I found on Shamanism was Eliade’s study on the matter, Shamanism. Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. I highly recommend it!

This post is about his idea that shamanism concentrates around mastering the technique of the ecstasy.

How do you picture the shaman?

In my naive perception, influenced by the pop culture, I used to imagine the shaman as a man with an undetermined age, living in his isolated hut, at the edge of the village. Covered in tattoos and paint, he is perceived as a madmen, but most importantly, feared by his fellow man in the same way you fear the night, unconsciously and viscerally. A sorcerer and a healer, the shaman performs his own function in society as the protector of the community, fighter of demons and (often regarded as correlated) diseases.

Reading Eliade’s study did not destroy this image for me. I still picture him like that. It rather put emphasis on another aspect, that I consequently choose to ignore before – the outer body experience (disembodiment) of the shaman or if you wish, transcendence.

For the shaman, the separation of the two fabrics that constitute the being – the mind/spirit and the body – is not only possible, but it’s subject to his will. The common man performers this separation only through death, which means the separation is permanent and irreversible. The shaman recovers through ecstasy (trance) a form of the human condition that existed before the falling of mankind from the heavens. This is why disembodiment and embodiment is possible for him and in this way he is chosen.

I will not explore here the subject of inhabiting other life forms such as animals (I will reserve this for another post) other than to attract attention to the fact most often the inhabited animals can fly. The Siberian, Eskimo and North American shamans are often portrayed as being able to fly, which is clearly another manifestation of their spiritual force. This has also something to do with how we universally picture the movement of spirits. If you need more proof of this, think about how the Holly Spirit was portrayed in Christianity. The fact that the shamans fly does not only make them similar to the spirits, it attests their spiritual autonomy and freedom.

In a way, the shaman dies whenever he leaves his body. He is granted permission to move all over the Axis Mundi (or another variation of this, such as the Tree of life), from the underworld to the heavens and then back to the land of the living if, and only if, he can survive the climb in his ecstasy. The climb is another symbol connected with gaining access to heavens. Although it can be portrayed as crossing a bridge, the most common symbol of the climb is ascending on a latter (klimax [Greek] =staircase or latter).

At the same time the shaman cheats death, for he is able to return his body after he has completed his journey. As he is able to move through the axis, the shaman comes into contact with all that inhabits this planes such as demons or spirits. This is how he is able to contact the spirits and fight the demons.

The shaman’s experience cannot be assimilated in anyway with dreaming, although the ritual of disembodiment often requires narcotics or another form of losing consciousness (such as dancing until exhaustion). The accent doesn’t fall on altered forms of consciousness. I think about the narcotics and the dancing more of in terms of catalysts for the shaman, triggers rather than the actual rituals. The ritual is leaving the body. The difficulty is maintaining that body alive without a soul.

I mentioned in the beginning that the shaman is often perceived as a madmen, but beyond that the shaman is feared not because of connection with the spiritual, but because of his relationship with death which for him, is intermittent.