Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

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Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
The first edition of Eliade's Le Chamanisme et les techniques archaques de l'extase, 1951.
Author Mircea Eliade
Country France, United States
Language English
Subject Religious history
Publisher Librarie Payot
Publication date
1951
Publishedin English
1964
Mediatype Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy is a historical study of the different forms of shamanism around the
world written by the Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade. It was first published in France by Librarie Payot
under the French title of Le Chamanisme et les techniques archaques de l'extase in 1951. The book was
subsequently translated into English by Willard R. Trask and published by Princeton University Press in 1964.
At the time of the book's writing, Eliade had earned a PhD studying Hinduism in India before becoming involved
with far right politics in his native Romania. After the rise of the far left communist government, he fled to Paris,
France in 1945, where he took up an academic position and began studying shamanism, authoring several academic
papers on the subject before publishing his book.
The first half of Shamanism deals with the various different elements of shamanic practice, such as the nature of
initiatory sickness and dreams, the method for obtaining shamanic powers, the role of shamanic initiation and the
symbolism of the shaman's costume and drum. The book's second half looks at the development of shamanism in
each region of the world where it is found, including Central and North Asia, the Americas, Southeastern Asia and
Oceania and also Tibet, China and the Far East. Eliade argues that all of these shamanisms must have had a common
source as the original religion of humanity in the Palaeolithic.
On publication, Eliade's book was recognised as a seminal and authoritative study on the subject of shamanism. In
later decades, as anthropological and historical scholarship increased and improved, elements of the book came
under increasing scrutiny, as did Eliade's argument that there was a global phenomenon that could be termed
"shamanism" or that all shamanisms had a common source. His book also proved to be a significant influence over
the Neoshamanic movement which developed in the western world in the 1960s and 1970s.
Background
Mircea Eliade was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1907. Attending the Spiru Haret National College, he
subsequently studied at the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Philosophy and Letters from 1925 through to 1928.
Traveling to India to study the country's religions, in 1933 he received his PhD for a thesis devoted to a discussion of
Yoga. Writing for the nationalist newspaper Cuvntul, he spoke out against antisemitism but became associated with
the Iron Guard, a Romanian fascist group. Arrested for his involvement in the far right, following his release in 1940
he gained employment as a cultural attach to both the United Kingdom and then Portugal. Following the Second
World War, Eliade moved to Paris, France, fearing the rise of a communist government in Romania. Here, he
married for a second time, to the Romanian exile Christinel Cotescu.
[1]
Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
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Together with Emil Cioran and other Romanian expatriates, Eliade rallied with the former diplomat Alexandru
Busuioceanu, helping him publicize anti-communist opinion to the Western European public.
[2]
In 1947, he was
facing material constraints, and Ananda Coomaraswamy found him a job as a French-language teacher in the United
States, at a school in Arizona; the arrangement ended upon Coomaraswamy's death in September.
[3]
Beginning in
1948, he wrote for the journal Critique, edited by French thinker Georges Bataille.
[4]
The following year, he went on
a visit to Italy, where he wrote the first 300 pages of his novel Noaptea de Snziene (he visited the country a third
time in 1952). He collaborated with Carl Jung and the Eranos circle after Henry Corbin recommended him in 1949,
and wrote for the Antaios magazine (edited by Ernst Jnger).
[5]
In 1950, Eliade began attending Eranos conferences,
meeting Jung, Olga Frbe-Kapteyn, Gershom Scholem and Paul Radin.
[6]
He described Eranos as "one of the most
creative cultural experiences of the modern Western world."
[7]
Working from France, Eliade had begun to study shamanism from a global perspective, publishing three papers on
the subject: "Le Problme du chamanisme" in the Revue de l'histoire des religions journal (1946), "Shamanism" in
Forgotten Religions, an anthology edited by Vergilius Ferm (1949), and "Einfhrende Betrachtungen ber den
Schamanismus" in the Paideuma journal (1951). He had also lectured on the subject in March 1950 at both the
University of Rome and the Instituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente.
[8]
Synopsis
"To the best of our knowledge the present book is the first to cover the entire phenomenon of shamanism and at the same time to situate it
in the general history of religion. To say this is to imply its liability to imperfection and approximation and the risks that it takes."
Mircea Eliade, 1951.
[9]
In his foreword, Eliade explains the approach that he has taken in the book, noting that his intention is to situate
world shamanism within the larger history of religion. Disputing any claims that shamanism is a result of mental
illness, he highlights the benefits that further sociological and ethnographic research could provide before explaining
the role of a historian of religions. Describing shamanism as "precisely one of the archaic techniques of ecstasy", he
proclaims that it is "at once mysticism, magic and "religion" in the broadest sense of the term."
[10]
Chapter one, "General Considerations. Recruiting Methods. Shamanism and Mystical Vocation", details Eliade's
exploration of the etymology and terminological usage of the word "shamanism".
[11]
Arguments
Definition of "shamanism"
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.
[12]
Reception
Wider influence
Discussing the Norse practice of Seir in her book Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (1964), the academic Hilda
Ellis Davidson described Eliade's French-language book as the "fullest recent study of shamanism".
[13]
Further criticism of some of Eliade's positions came from the English historian Ronald Hutton of the University of
Bristol in his book, Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination (2001). Hutton took issue with
Eliade's claim that divination only played a minor role in Siberian shamanism, claiming that Eliade had produced no
data to substantiate such an assertion, and that the ethnographic evidence actually indicated that the opposite was
true. He saw this as part of a wider problem whereby Eliade had ignored certain "varieties of native practitioner"
Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
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from his "chosen image of shaman" and had been "intent on generalizations."
[14]
Later in the book, Hutton argued
that Eliade's description of traditional Siberian cosmology oversimplified great diversity among the various Siberian
indigenous groups and that Eliade's claims that Siberian shamanism revolved around a vision of death and rebirth
was similarly erroneous.
[15]
"Several of [Eliade's] grand cross-cultural themes the sky god, the quest, the sacred center as well as the tension between historical
specificity and synchronic themes, loom large in Shamanism, which remains one of his most interesting, important, and influential
books."
Wendy Doniger on Shamanism, 2004.
[16]
For the 2004 English-language re-publication of Shamanism by Princeton University Press, a new foreword was
commissioned from the academic Indologist Wendy Doniger. At the time, Doniger held the position of Mircea
Eliade Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago, a post that had been created in Eliade's
honour. Having been a personal friend and colleague of his for many years, Doniger used her foreword to defend
him from accusations that he was either a fascist or an anti-semite, and evaluated his work in Shamanism. Drawing
comparisons with anthropologist James Frazer and philologist Max Mller, she accepted that while he advanced the
knowledge of his time "within a body of assumptions that we no longer accept", his work inspired "an entire
generation" of scholars and amateurs in the study of religion.
[17]
References
Footnotes
[1] Mihai Sorin Rdulescu, "Cottetii: familia soiei lui Mircea Eliade" ("The Cottescus: the Family of Mircea Eliade's Wife") (http:/ / www. zf.
ro/ articol_87328/ cottestii__familia_sotiei_lui_mircea_eliade. html), in Ziarul Financiar, June 30, 2006; retrieved January 22, 2008
[2] Dan Gulea, "O perspectiv sintetic" ("A Syncretic Perspective") (http:/ / www. observatorcultural. ro/ informatiiarticol. phtml?xid=12070),
in Observator Cultural, Nr. 242, October 2004; retrieved October 4, 2007
[3] [3] McGuire, p.150
[4] Biografie, in Handoca
[5] Albert Ribas, "Mircea Eliade, historiador de las religiones" ("Mircea Eliade, Historian of Religions"), in El Ciervo. Revista de pensamiento y
cultura, Ao 49, Nm. 588 (Marzo 2000), p.3538
[6] McGuire, p.150151
[7] [7] McGuire, p.151
[8] [8] Eliade 2004 [1951]. p. xxvii.
[9] [9] Eliade 2004 [1951]. p. xvii.
[10] Eliade 2004 [1951]. pp. xviixxvii
[11] Eliade 2004 [1951]. pp. 332.
[12] [12] Eliade 2004 [1951]. p. 4.
[13] [13] Ellis Davidson 1964. p. 118.
[14] Hutton 2001. pp. 5455, 81.
[15] Hutton 2001. pp. 6061, 74.
[16] [16] Doniger 2004. p. xiii.
[17] Doniger 2004. pp. xixv.
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Bibliography
Academic books
Ellis Davidson, H.R. (1964). Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. London: Penguin.
Hutton, Ronald (2001). Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination. London and New York:
Hambledon and London. ISBN978-1-85285-324-2.
Price, Neil (2002). The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. Uppsala: Department of
Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University. ISBN91-506-1626-9.
Article Sources and Contributors
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Article Sources and Contributors
Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=589346447 Contributors: Guy1890, John, John of Reading, Midnightblueowl, Omnipaedista,
Smetanahue, 4 anonymous edits
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