Within the depth-psychology corpus, Shamanism occupies a pivotal and contested position as the archaic prototype of the healer, the ecstatic, and the psychic mediator between visible and invisible worlds. Mircea Eliade’s foundational work establishes the definitional terms: shamanism is pre-eminently a Siberian and Central Asian phenomenon whose cardinal feature is not spirit-possession per se, but the shaman’s controlled ecstatic ascent to the sky or descent to the underworld — a distinction Eliade insists upon against broader usages that would subsume all techniques of ecstasy under the term. Joseph Campbell reads the shamanistic crisis as touching the universal stratum of mystical experience, connecting it to what Adolf Bastian called ‘elementary ideas’ and placing it in dialogue with Jungian depth-psychology’s concern with the non-historical substrate of psychic life. Shaun McNiff repositions shamanism as an archetypal rather than a literal category, tracing structural continuities between the shaman’s enactment of inner storm and the practice of contemporary art therapy. Recent Jungian scholarship (Sun and Kim, 2024) examines shamanic ritual through the lens of altered states of consciousness and archetypal symbolism. The central tensions in the corpus revolve around definition (ecstasy vs. possession), scope (Siberia vs. universal), and application (ethnographic specificity vs. archetypal generalization).
the magico-religious life of society centers on the shaman. This, of course, does not mean that he is the one and only manipulator of the sacred, nor that religious activity is completely usurped by him.
Eliade establishes the shaman as the dominating but not exclusive religious figure of Central and North Asia, whose defining capacity is ecstatic experience.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
the specific element of shamanism is not the embodiment of ‘spirits’ by the shaman, but the ecstasy induced by his ascent to the sky or descent to the underworld; incarnating spirits and being ‘possessed’ by spirits are universally disseminated phenomena, but they do not necessarily belong to shamanism in the strict sense.
Eliade’s most precise definitional claim: ecstatic journeying, not spirit-possession, constitutes the irreducible core of genuine shamanism.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
we cannot even consider every technique of ecstasy found in the East ‘shamanic,’ however ‘primitive’ it may be.
Eliade cautions against the indiscriminate extension of the shamanic label to all archaic ecstatic phenomena, insisting on structural specificity.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
It is only this twofold initiation — ecstatic and didactic — that transforms the candidate from a possible neurotic into a shaman recognized by his particular society.
Eliade argues that shamanic vocation is validated not by psychopathology but by a dual process of ecstatic ordeal and cultural transmission through initiation.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
shamanism is tied to the particular personality of the shaman, whose techniques of transcendence relate to the unifying myths and beliefs of the community. This cultivation of individual healing styles characterizes both shamans and contemporary psychotherapists.
McNiff, drawing on Eliade, identifies the individualized and community-grounded healing dynamic of the shaman as the structural forerunner of psychotherapeutic practice.
, Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul, 2004thesis
the artist and the shaman go to the heart of the inner storm and enact its furies in a way that benefits the individual and the community. The end result is not just emotional catharsis but deepened insight into the nature of human emotion.
McNiff positions the shaman and the artist as functionally parallel figures who transform psychological crisis through creative enactment rather than suppression.
, Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul, 2004thesis
I see the shaman as an archetypal figure, a universal aspect of art and healing that helps to deepen and expand the image of the creative arts therapist. Shaman has become a cross-cultural term that gives a common name to indigenous healers throughout the world.
McNiff explicitly reframes ‘shaman’ as a Jungian archetypal category applicable across cultures rather than as a literal ethnographic identity.
, Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul, 2004thesis
In the present chapter on shamanism, that is to say, we are touching lightly the problem of the mystical experience — which is n[ot historically bound].
Campbell situates shamanism at the intersection of the historical and the non-historical, treating it as a primary site of encounter with the universal substrate of mystical experience.
, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959thesis
The introversion of the shamanistic crisis and the break, temporarily, from the local system of practical life lead to a field of experience that in the [higher traditions] would seem to represent precisely what Bastian was referring to when he wrote of elementary ideas.
Campbell links the shamanistic crisis to Bastian’s elementary ideas and Jungian archetypes, reading it as a universal psychic event beneath its cultural variations.
, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959supporting
we should prefer to emphasize the ecstatic capacity of the shaman as opposed to the priest, and his positive function in comparison with the antisocial activities of the sorcerer, the black magician.
Eliade differentiates the shaman from both priest and sorcerer by emphasizing ecstatic capacity and a constructive social healing function.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
Descents to the underworld, the struggle against evil spirits, but also the increasingly familiar relations with ‘spirits’ that result in their ‘embodiment’ or in the shaman’s being ‘possessed’ by ‘spirits,’ are innovations, most of them recent, to be ascribed to the general change in the religious complex.
Eliade traces the historical deterioration of classical shamanism — from sky-ascent toward spirit-possession — as a product of external religious influences on Central Asian traditions.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
In the enactments of the shaman I have found evidence that art and healing are forever united in human experience.
McNiff frames shamanism as the historical and archetypal evidence for the inseparability of artistic practice and therapeutic healing.
, Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul, 2004supporting
We find the broad outlines of one and the same shamanic complex from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. North Asian or even Asiatic-Oceanian contributions in all probability merely reinforced, and sometimes modified in details, a shamanic ideology and technique already widely disseminated.
Eliade argues for the pan-American antiquity and relative autonomy of shamanic ideology, resisting reductive diffusionist explanations.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
The gods decided to give mankind a shaman to combat disease and death, and they sent the eagle. But men did not understand its language; besides, they had no confidence in a mere bird.
A representative Buryat etiological myth illustrating how the shaman’s divine mandate is narratively grounded in the cosmic necessity of mediating between gods and humanity.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
Eliade, M. (2020). Shamanism: archaic techniques of ecstasy. Princeton University Press.
Sun and Kim’s Jungian study of shamanic ritual cites Eliade as foundational, situating shamanism within a framework of archetypal symbols and altered states of consciousness.
, Archetype Symbols and Altered Consciousness: A Study of Shamanic Rituals in the Context of Jungian Psychology, 2024supporting
it is the laymen who attempt to imitate the ecstatic experiences of certain privileged individuals, and not vice versa.
Eliade argues against the hypothesis that professional shamanism derived from ‘family shamanism,’ affirming that ecstatic capacity originates in privileged individuals and is subsequently imitated communally.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
like all other peoples, the Indo-Europeans had their magicians and ecstatics. As everywhere else, these magicians and ecstatics filled a definite function in the total magico-religious life of the society.
Eliade extends the comparative shamanic framework to Indo-European traditions, maintaining the universality of the ecstatic-magician role across cultures.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
not all who would like to practice the shaman’s art can do so.
Campbell’s ethnographic material illustrates the selective and non-voluntary dimension of shamanic calling, reinforcing Eliade’s account of the vocation’s involuntary character.
, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959supporting
‘Shamanism’ through possession is also known in other provinces of India. The ‘spirit marriage’ of the Savara shamans appears to be a unique phenomenon in aboriginal India.
Eliade documents possession-based shamanic variants in India while signaling their structural divergence from the classical ecstatic model he champions.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
Lamaism attempted to wipe out shamanism. But the old Mongolian religion finally assimilated the Lamaistic contributions without losing its peculiar character.
Eliade traces the resilience of shamanic traditions in Mongolia and Korea against the encroachment of institutionalized Buddhist religion.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
This ‘spiritual’ mobility and freedom, which are fostered by the shaman’s ecstatic experiences, at the same time make him vulnerable, and frequently, through his constant struggling with evil spirits, he falls into their power.
Eliade identifies the paradox at the heart of shamanic practice: the same ecstatic freedom that constitutes the shaman’s power also renders him susceptible to possession by the very spirits he combats.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
Morphologically the future shaman’s initiatory ordeals are of the same order as this great class of passage rites and ceremonies for entering secret societies.
Eliade situates shamanic initiation within the broader morphological class of rites of passage, noting structural homologies with tribal and secret-society initiations.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951aside
the use of an arrow as vehicle by the soul is implicit in ‘the Buryat’s shaman’s use of arrows to summon back the souls of the sick,’ but this use of the arrow can instead be connected with a widespread explanation of illnesses as caused by projectiles.
Bremmer critically examines Dodds’s shamanic parallels between Greek and Siberian soul-beliefs, cautioning against over-confident comparative inference from material culture.
, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, 1983aside