page_title: Shamans (Hutton book)
section_title: Part Two: What we think we know about shamans
hierarchical_section_title: Shamans (Hutton book) / Synopsis / Part Two: What we think we know about shamans
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Алтайский шаман с бубном на фоне традиционного жилища - чаадыр Nederlands: Altajse sjamaan met een tamtam met op de achtergrond een tsjaadyr (traditionele woonplaats) English: A postcard made in the Russian Empire, early 20th century. Its French caption means "An Altai shaman (sorcerer)". It can be found at a Tomsk museum. The ethnographer Hoppál identifies the shamaness to be either an Altai-Kizhi or a Khakas, unable to be more precise based on this image alone.&#91;1&#93; The ethnographic photo on which this postcards was based had been taken by ethnographer S. I. Borisov in 1908.&#91;2&#93;. Note that the standing woman is holding a shaman's drum, not a gong. Français&#160;: Image d'une carte postale de l'Empire russe, du début du XXe siècle. Son texte original écrit en français «&#160;Un chaman (sorcier) d'Alatai&#160;», Alatai faisant référence à l'Altaï. Cette image peut également être vue au musée de Tomsk. L’ethnographe Hoppál attribue à la femme chaman une origine altaïenne (altaï-kizhi) ou khakasse, tout en admettant que l'image seule ne permet de décider précisément laquelle&#91;3&#93;. La photo ethnographique, d'après laquelle la carte postale a été créée, a été prise par l'ethnographe S. I. Borisov en 1908.&#91;4&#93;. La femme debout porte un tambour de chaman et non pas un gong.
context_page_description: Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination is a historical study of how westerners have viewed the shamans of Siberia. It was written by the English historian Ronald Hutton, then working at the University of Bristol, and first published by Hambledon and London in 2001. Prior to writing Shamans, Hutton had authored a series of books on such subjects as Early Modern Britain, pre-Christian religion, British folklore and Contemporary Paganism.
  The book is divided into three sections. The first, entitled "Why we think we know about shamans", looks at how Russians and other westerners have understood Siberia and its shamanic practitioners from the Middle Ages to the present day. Specifically, it looks at how the concept of Siberia was created by the invading Russians, and how the governments of the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union interacted with the many ethnic groups who lived there, and how they dealt with its indigenous shamanic beliefs. In the second section, "What we think we know about shamans", he proceeds to highlight the difficulty with the concept of shamanism, which has never been definitively defined by scholars.
context_section_description: Chapter five, "What Shamans Did", offers Hutton's exploration of what can be said for certain about the shamans of Siberia. He notes that the term "shaman" was a "crude" label that has been used to refer to a wide variety of different magico-religious practitioners within the Siberian region, and also highlights the fact that the role of the shaman was rarely central to Indigenous Siberian religion. He emphasises that among different tribal groups, shamans served different individuals, and performed different functions in society, although were typically involved in healing and divinatory practices. In the sixth chapter, entitled "Shamanic Cosmologies", Hutton notes that there were three cosmological concepts widespread among Indigenous Siberians: "the beliefs that even apparently inanimate objects were inhabited by spirit-forms; that the world was structured on a number of different levels; and that living beings possessed more than one 'soul' or animating force." Noting that scholars can only truly discuss shamanism based on evidence from the 19th and 20th centuries, when such beliefs had already begun to syncretically mix with incoming foreign religious movements, he then goes on to discuss the myriad different types of spirit assistants found in the cosmologies of Siberia. Throughout this, he emphasises the huge variation within the Siberian region, with different cultural and ethnic groups holding different beliefs about the structure of the cosmos and the relationship between the shaman and those spirits with whom they worked. Criticising the Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade for claiming that all Siberian shamans controlled spirits rather than being possessed and controlled by them, Hutton provides evidence to the contrary, highlighting that in certain areas, shamans simply placated spirits rather than controlling them. He then goes on to discuss the western rationalist view that the spirits worked with by shamans were actually altered states of mind existing within the shaman's imagination.
  Chapter seven, "Shamanic Apprenticeship and Equipment", explores the nature of hereditary apprenticeships among Siberian shamans, as well as looking at the concept of a "shamanic illness" through which the individual had to undergo great suffering before they could gain their powers. Exploring the training of a shaman, Hutton criticises Eliade's idea that a vision of death and rebirth was universally intrinsic to shamanism, highlighting that it wasn't even found across the entirety of Siberia, let alone the world. Instead, he states that the "truly universal pattern" was that of the "period of withdrawal" that the trainee shaman undertook before entering the profession, when their rite of passage would come to an end and they would be recognised by both pre-existing shamans and their clientele. Moving on to a discussion of paraphernalia and costume, he argues that the inclusion of at least one shamanic item was standard across Siberia.
  In the eighth chapter, "Shamanic Performance", Hutton describes Siberian shamans as "performing artists", although notes that there was great variation in what these performances actually entailed. Discussing whether some of their performances were improvised, he then looks at the involvement of either apprentices or specialist shamanic assistants. Exploring the role of the audience, he then rounds off the chapter by looking at the alleged superhuman feats that shamans could perform – such as levitation and acts of extreme self-harm – and while explaining that some of these can be shown to be illusions, in the case of others, he remarks that the explanation remains a "disturbingly open question." In the final chapter of Part Two, "Knots and Loose Ends", Hutton explores a variety of different elements to shamanism in Siberia. Discussing the role of payment, he highlights that in some areas, shamans were always paid for their services, but that in others it was customary for them to give their aid for free; for this reason he considers Siberian shamanism to be "a vocation rather than a 
caption: Russian postcard based on a photo taken in 1908 by S. I. Borisov, showing a female shaman, of probable Khakas ethnicity.
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