spirit communication
Shamanic divination — encompassing the full range of practices by which the shaman solicits, receives, and transmits knowledge from spirits — occupies a structurally central position in the depth-psychology corpus, particularly in its encounter with archaic religious technology. Eliade's monumental Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy provides the indispensable ethnographic and phenomenological foundation, documenting how the séance, the ecstatic trance, the dialogue with spirit interlocutors, and oracular techniques collectively constitute the shaman's epistemic authority within the community. Eliade frames divination not as mere fortune-telling but as an ontological event: the shaman's soul genuinely traverses cosmic zones, and the knowledge returned is authoritative precisely because it was obtained through direct encounter with spiritual powers. The corpus discloses several productive tensions: the question of authenticity versus simulation in trance states; the variable relationship between ecstasy and divination across cultural regions; and the structural homology between shamanic spirit-consultation and later institutionalized oracular or divinatory systems. Campbell extends these themes mythologically, while Abram reads the divinatory encounter with spirits as an expression of a broader animistic epistemology in which the animate landscape itself speaks. The depth-psychological relevance lies in understanding how shamanic divination externalizes and dramatizes processes — descent, interrogation of the unknown, return with knowledge — that Jungian analysis internalizes as engagement with the unconscious.
the shaman is also employed as a master of divination. This is practiced either by oracular bones or by a shamanic séance. This gift comes to him from his relations with the spirits.
Eliade identifies divination as a primary shamanic function, directly derived from the shaman's constitutive relationship with spirits, practiced either through material oracular means or through the full séance.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
In his song he reproduces his dialogue with the spirits, and its intensity follows the dramatic interest of the conversation. When the song reaches its paroxysmic point, the audience begins to sing in chorus.
Eliade describes the Samoyed séance as a performed dialogue with spirits in which song, ritual gesture, and communal participation together constitute the divinatory event.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
Through the shaman's voice the spirits of the dead converse with the audience. If the séances abound in parapsychological phenomena, the shamanic trance proper has become increasingly rare.
Eliade documents how spirit-communication through the shaman's voice is the operative divinatory mechanism, while noting the progressive decline of genuine ecstatic trance in favor of simulation.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
To identify the author of the trouble, the shaman incarnates his familiar spirit and pretends to sleep (a poor imitation of the shamanic trance) or attempts to evoke and embody the spirit that is troubling the patient.
Eliade details how diagnostic divination — identifying the spirit responsible for illness — is performed through spirit-embodiment and controlled séance, linking divination structurally to healing.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
The Lapp shamans also use their drums in divination. The Tungus practice a sort of limited divination, which consists in throwing the shamanic drumstick into the air; its position after falling answers the question asked.
Eliade surveys the instrumental dimension of shamanic divination across Central and North Asian cultures, showing that the drum and its accessories serve as primary divinatory instruments alongside full spirit-communication.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
it is the shaman's visionary power, which is able to penetrate both the past and the future. The shaman, furthermore, has bird and animal familiars who assist him in his task.
Campbell frames shamanic divination as an expression of a specific visionary capacity — penetration of temporal boundaries past and future — assisted by animal familiars who function as spirit intermediaries.
, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959supporting
If the goddess is angry with men, a great wall rises before her house. And the shaman has to knock it down with his shoulder.
Eliade's account of the Inuit shaman's descent to Takánakapsáluk illustrates divination as a heroic negotiation with the spirit world, wherein the shaman physically overcomes obstacles to obtain information and restored abundance.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
there was a class of priests who professed to have power to guide the dead to heaven because they were masters of the rope or ladder; these priests were the dMu. This rope... was replaced, among other Bon priests, by the rope of divination.
Eliade traces the Tibetan Bon tradition's transformation of the cosmological axis — the rope connecting earth and heaven — into a specific instrument of divination, demonstrating the continuity between spirit-world access and oracular practice.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
It is to this Kingdom of Shadows that the shaman descends to seek the patient's soul. But he goes there on another occasion too: to 'steal' a soul from there and cause it to be born here on earth.
Eliade shows that shamanic descent — the structural vehicle of divination — serves multiple social ends including soul-retrieval, fertility, and the mediation of relations between the living and the dead.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
spoken language was originally a swirling garment of vapour and breath worn by the encompassing earth itself. Later this undulating garment was stolen by the jackal, an animal whose movements, ever since, have disclosed the prophetic speech of the world to seers and diviners.
Abram uses Dogon cosmology to argue that indigenous divination is grounded in an animistic epistemology in which the landscape itself speaks and animal behavior mediates prophetic knowledge.
, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996supporting
invocations of the spirits; the drum — which, it has been noted, bore drawings similar to those on Altaic drums — played a great part in producing the trance. On divination by means of the drum, see ibid., pp. 148-49.
Eliade connects the drum's iconic and sonic properties to the induction of trance and specifically to divinatory function, noting the drum's role as an instrument of spirit-invocation across Norse and Lapp traditions.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
Odin is also the institutor of necromancy. On his horse Sleipnir, he enters Hel and bids.
Eliade identifies Odin as a mythological archetype of shamanic divination through necromancy — the direct consultation of the dead — linking Indo-European religious tradition to the broader shamanic pattern of spirit-communication.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
a power that we call Sila, one that cannot be explained in so many words: a very strong spirit, the upholder of the universe... His speech to man comes not through ordinary words, but through storms, snowfall, rain showers, the tempests of the sea.
Campbell presents the Inuit concept of Sila as a model of spirit-communication in which natural phenomena themselves constitute the divinatory medium, bypassing the séance in favor of total environmental attentiveness.
, Myths to Live By, 1972supporting
uses the 'language of the spirits' during séances; and the shamanic chants of the Dusun (North Borneo) are in secret language. According to Carib tradition, the first shaman was a man who, hearing a song rise from a stream, dived boldly in and did not come out again until he had memorized the song of the spirit women.
Eliade documents the role of secret or spirit language as the specialized communicative register of shamanic divination, showing that the original acquisition of shamanic power is itself a divinatory encounter with spirit voices.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
even when he takes part in sacrifices, the shaman plays more of a 'spiritual' role; he is concerned only with the mystical itinerary of the sacrificed animal. The reason is plain: the shaman knows the road.
Eliade clarifies that the shaman's divinatory authority rests ultimately on cosmological knowledge — knowing the routes of the spirit world — which distinguishes him from other ritual practitioners.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951aside
There is in each of us a longing to see beyond what our usual sight tells us. A revelation of the invisible in an intelligible form leads us to the astrologer.
Hillman locates an archetypal impulse toward divinatory knowledge in the human psyche, suggesting that the consultation of astrologer or diviner responds to a universal need to perceive invisible determinants of fate.
, The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996aside
The I Ching is the classic, channel or loom of I... a way of dealing with trouble. It articulates possible responses to fate, necessity or calamity — that which 'crosses' your path.
Ritsema and Karcher present the I Ching as a formalized oracular system functionally analogous to shamanic divination: a technology for receiving intelligible responses from an otherwise inscrutable order.
, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994aside