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The 5th Epochal Revelation
-The Urantia Papers
PAPER 90
SHAMANISM -- MEDICINE MEN AND PRIESTS
90:0.1
THE evolution of religious observances progressed from
placation, avoidance, exorcism, coercion, conciliation,
and propitiation to sacrifice, atonement, and
redemption. The technique of religious ritual passed
from the forms of the primitive cult through fetishes to
magic and miracles; and as ritual became more complex in
response to man's increasingly complex concept of the
supermaterial realms, it was inevitably dominated by
medicine men, shamans, and priests.
90:0.2
In the advancing concepts of primitive man the spirit
world was eventually regarded as being unresponsive to
the ordinary mortal. Only the exceptional among humans
could catch the ear of the gods; only the extraordinary
man or woman would be heard by the spirits. Religion
thus enters upon a new phase, a stage wherein it
gradually becomes secondhanded; always does a medicine
man, a shaman, or a priest intervene between the
religionist and the object of worship. And today most
Urantia systems of organized religious belief are
passing through this level of evolutionary development.
90:0.3
Evolutionary religion is born of a simple and
all-powerful fear, the fear which surges through the
human mind when confronted with the unknown, the
inexplicable, and the incomprehensible. Religion
eventually achieves the profoundly simple realization of
an all-powerful love, the love which sweeps irresistibly
through the human soul when awakened to the conception
of the limitless affection of the Universal Father for
the sons of the universe. But in between the beginning
and the consummation of religious evolution, there
intervene the long ages of the shamans, who presume to
stand between man and God as intermediaries,
interpreters, and intercessors.
1. THE FIRST SHAMANS -- THE MEDICINE MEN
90:1.1
The shaman was the ranking medicine man, the ceremonial
fetishman, and the focus personality for all the
practices of evolutionary religion. In many groups the
shaman outranked the war chief, marking the beginning of
the church domination of the state. The shaman sometimes
functioned as a priest and even as a priest-king. Some
of the later tribes had both the earlier shaman-medicine
men (seers) and the later appearing shaman-priests. And
in many cases the office of shaman became hereditary.
90:1.2
Since in olden times anything abnormal was ascribed to
spirit possession, any striking mental or physical
abnormality constituted qualification for being a
medicine man. Many of these men were epileptic, many of
the women hysteric, and these two types accounted for a
good deal of ancient inspiration as well as spirit and
devil possession. Quite a few of these earliest of
priests were of a class which has since been denominated
paranoiac.
90:1.3
While they may have practiced deception in minor
matters, the great majority of the shamans believed in
the fact of their spirit possession. Women who were able
to throw themselves into a trance or a cataleptic fit
became powerful shamanesses; later, such women became
prophets and spirit mediums. Their cataleptic trances
usually involved alleged communications with the ghosts
of the dead. Many female shamans were also professional
dancers.
90:1.4
But not all shamans were self-deceived; many were shrewd
and able tricksters. As the profession developed, a
novice was required to serve an apprenticeship of ten
years of hardship and self-denial to qualify as a
medicine man. The shamans developed a professional mode
of dress and affected a mysterious conduct. They
frequently employed drugs to induce certain physical
states which would impress and mystify the tribesmen.
Sleight-of-hand feats were regarded as supernatural by
the common folk, and ventriloquism was first used by
shrewd priests. Many of the olden shamans unwittingly
stumbled onto hypnotism; others induced autohypnosis by
prolonged staring at their navels.
90:1.5
While many resorted to these tricks and deceptions,
their reputation as a class, after all, stood on
apparent achievement. When a shaman failed in his
undertakings, if he could not advance a plausible alibi,
he was either demoted or killed. Thus the honest shamans
early perished; only the shrewd actors survived.
90:1.6
It was shamanism that took the exclusive direction of
tribal affairs out of the hands of the old and the
strong and lodged it in the hands of the shrewd, the
clever, and the farsighted.
2. SHAMANISTIC PRACTICES
90:2.1
Spirit conjuring was a very precise and highly
complicated procedure, comparable to present-day church
rituals conducted in an ancient tongue. The human race
very early sought for superhuman help, for
revelation;
and men believed that the shaman actually received such
revelations. While the shamans utilized the great power
of suggestion in their work, it was almost invariably
negative suggestion; only in very recent times has the
technique of positive suggestion been employed. In the
early development of their profession the shamans began
to specialize in such vocations as rain making, disease
healing, and crime detecting. To heal diseases was not,
however, the chief function of a shamanic medicine man;
it was, rather, to know and to control the hazards of
living.
90:2.2
Ancient black art, both religious and secular, was
called white art when practiced by either priests,
seers, shamans, or medicine men. The practitioners of
the black art were called sorcerers, magicians, wizards,
witches, enchanters, necromancers, conjurers, and
soothsayers. As time passed, all such purported contact
with the supernatural was classified either as
witchcraft or shamancraft.
90:2.3
Witchcraft embraced the magic performed by earlier,
irregular, and unrecognized spirits; shamancraft had to
do with miracles
performed by regular spirits and recognized gods of the
tribe. In later times the witch became associated with
the devil, and thus was the stage set for the many
comparatively recent exhibitions of religious
intolerance. Witchcraft was a religion with many
primitive tribes.
90:2.4
The shamans were great believers in the mission of
chance as revelatory of the will of the spirits; they
frequently cast lots to arrive at decisions. Modern
survivals of this proclivity for casting lots are
illustrated, not only in the many games of chance, but
also in the well-known "counting-out" rhymes. Once, the
person counted out must die; now, he is only
it in some
childish game. That which was serious business to
primitive man has survived as a diversion of the modern
child.
90:2.5
The medicine men put great trust in signs and omens,
such as, "When you hear the sound of a rustling in the
tops of the mulberry trees, then shall you bestir
yourself." Very early in the history of the race the
shamans turned their attention to the stars. Primitive
astrology was a world-wide belief and practice; dream
interpreting also became widespread. All this was soon
followed by the appearance of those temperamental
shamanesses who professed to be able to communicate with
the spirits of the dead.
90:2.6
Though of ancient origin, the rain makers, or weather
shamans, have persisted right on down through the ages.
A severe drought meant death to the early
agriculturists; weather control was the object of much
ancient magic. Civilized man still makes the weather the
common topic of conversation. The olden peoples all
believed in the power of the shaman as a rain maker, but
it was customary to kill him when he failed, unless he
could offer a plausible excuse to account for the
failure.
90:2.7
Again and again did the Caesars banish the astrologers,
but they invariably returned because of the popular
belief in their powers. They could not be driven out,
and even in the sixteenth century after Christ the
directors of Occidental church and state were the
patrons of astrology. Thousands of supposedly
intelligent people still believe that one may be born
under the domination of a lucky or an unlucky star; that
the juxtaposition of the heavenly bodies determines the
outcome of various terrestrial adventures.
Fortunetellers are still patronized by the credulous.
90:2.8
The Greeks believed in the efficacy of oracular advice,
the Chinese used magic as protection against demons,
shamanism flourished in India, and it still openly
persists in central Asia. It is an only recently
abandoned practice throughout much of the world.
90:2.9
Ever and anon, true prophets and teachers arose to
denounce and expose shamanism. Even the vanishing red
man had such a prophet within the past hundred years,
the Shawnee Teuskwatowa, who predicted the eclipse of
the sun in 1808 and denounced the vices of the white
man. Many true teachers have appeared among the various
tribes and races all through the long ages of
evolutionary history. And they will ever continue to
appear to challenge the shamans or priests of any age
who oppose general education and attempt to thwart
scientific progress.
90:2.10
In many ways and by devious methods the olden shamans
established their reputations as voices of God and
custodians of providence. They sprinkled the newborn
with water and conferred names upon them; they
circumcised the males. They presided over all burial
ceremonies and made due announcement of the safe arrival
of the dead in spiritland.
90:2.11
The shamanic priests and medicine men often became very
wealthy through the accretion of their various fees
which were ostensibly offerings to the spirits. Not
infrequently a shaman would accumulate practically all
the material wealth of his tribe. Upon the death of a
wealthy man it was customary to divide his property
equally with the shaman and some public enterprise or
charity. This practice still obtains in some parts of
Tibet, where one half the male population belongs to
this class of nonproducers.
90:2.12
The shamans dressed well and usually had a number of
wives; they were the original aristocracy, being exempt
from all tribal restrictions. They were very often of
low-grade mind and morals. They suppressed their rivals
by denominating them witches or sorcerers and very
frequently rose to such positions of influence and power
that they were able to dominate the chiefs or kings.
90:2.13
Primitive man regarded the shaman as a necessary evil;
he feared him but did not love him. Early man respected
knowledge; he honored and rewarded wisdom. The shaman
was mostly fraud, but the veneration for shamanism well
illustrates the premium put upon wisdom in the evolution
of the race.
3. THE SHAMANIC THEORY OF DISEASE AND DEATH
90:3.1
Since ancient man regarded himself and his material
environment as being directly responsive to the whims of
the ghosts and the fancies of the spirits, it is not
strange that his religion should have been so
exclusively concerned with material affairs. Modern man
attacks his material problems directly; he recognizes
that matter is responsive to the intelligent
manipulation of mind. Primitive man likewise desired to
modify and even to control the life and energies of the
physical domains; and since his limited comprehension of
the cosmos led him to the belief that ghosts, spirits,
and gods were personally and immediately concerned with
the detailed control of life and matter, he logically
directed his efforts to winning the favor and support of
these superhuman agencies.
90:3.2
Viewed in this light, much of the inexplicable and
irrational in the ancient cults is understandable. The
ceremonies of the cult were primitive man's attempt to
control the material world in which he found himself.
And many of his efforts were directed to the end of
prolonging life and insuring health. Since all diseases
and death itself were originally regarded as spirit
phenomena, it was inevitable that the shamans, while
functioning as medicine men and priests, should also
have labored as doctors and surgeons.
90:3.3
The primitive mind may be handicapped by lack of facts,
but it is for all that logical. When thoughtful men
observe disease and death, they set about to determine
the causes of these visitations, and in accordance with
their understanding, the shamans and the scientists have
propounded the following theories of affliction:
90:3.4
1. Ghosts --
direct spirit influences. The earliest hypothesis
advanced in explanation of disease and death was that
spirits caused disease by enticing the soul out of the
body; if it failed to return, death ensued. The ancients
so feared the malevolent action of disease-producing
ghosts that ailing individuals would often be deserted
without even food or water. Regardless of the erroneous
basis for these beliefs, they did effectively isolate
afflicted individuals and prevent the spread of
contagious disease.
90:3.5
2. Violence --
obvious causes. The causes for some accidents and
deaths were so easy to identify that they were early
removed from the category of ghost action. Fatalities
and wounds attendant upon war, animal combat, and other
readily identifiable agencies were considered as natural
occurrences. But it was long believed that the spirits
were still responsible for delayed healing or for the
infection of wounds of even "natural" causation. If no
observable natural agent could be discovered, the spirit
ghosts were still held responsible for disease and
death.
90:3.6
Today, in Africa and elsewhere may be found primitive
peoples who kill someone every time a nonviolent death
occurs. Their medicine men indicate the guilty parties.
If a mother dies in childbirth, the child is immediately
strangled -- a life for a life.
90:3.7
3. Magic -- the
influence of enemies. Much sickness was thought to
be caused by bewitchment, the action of the evil eye and
the magic pointing bow. At one time it was really
dangerous to point a finger at anyone; it is still
regarded as ill-mannered to point. In cases of obscure
disease and death the ancients would hold a formal
inquest, dissect the body, and settle upon some finding
as the cause of death; otherwise the death would be laid
to witchcraft, thus necessitating the execution of the
witch responsible therefor. These ancient coroner's
inquests saved many a supposed witch's life. Among some
it was believed that a tribesman could die as a result
of his own witchcraft, in which event no one was
accused.
90:3.8
4. Sin --
punishment for taboo violation. In comparatively
recent times it has been believed that sickness is a
punishment for sin, personal or racial. Among peoples
traversing this level of evolution the prevailing theory
is that one cannot be afflicted unless one has violated
a taboo. To regard sickness and suffering as "arrows of
the Almighty within them" is typical of such beliefs.
The Chinese and Mesopotamians long regarded disease as
the result of the action of evil demons, although the
Chaldeans also looked upon the stars as the cause of
suffering. This theory of disease as a consequence of
divine wrath is still prevalent among many reputedly
civilized groups of Urantians.
90:3.9
5. Natural
causation. Mankind has been very slow to learn the
material secrets of the interrelationship of cause and
effect in the physical domains of energy, matter, and
life. The ancient Greeks, having preserved the
traditions of Adamson's teachings, were among the first
to recognize that all disease is the result of natural
causes. Slowly and certainly the unfolding of a
scientific era is destroying man's age-old theories of
sickness and death. Fever was one of the first human
ailments to be removed from the category of supernatural
disorders, and progressively the era of science has
broken the fetters of ignorance which so long imprisoned
the human mind. An understanding of old age and
contagion is gradually obliterating man's fear of
ghosts, spirits, and gods as the personal perpetrators
of human misery and mortal suffering.
90:3.10
Evolution unerringly achieves its end: It imbues man
with that superstitious fear of the unknown and dread of
the unseen which is the scaffolding for the God concept.
And having witnessed the birth of an advanced
comprehension of Deity, through the co-ordinate action
of revelation, this same technique of evolution then
unerringly sets in motion those forces of thought which
will inexorably obliterate the scaffolding, which has
served its purpose.
4. MEDICINE UNDER THE SHAMANS
90:4.1
The entire life of ancient men was prophylactic; their
religion was in no small measure a technique for disease
prevention. And regardless of the error in their
theories, they were wholehearted in putting them into
effect; they had unbounded faith in their methods of
treatment, and that, in itself, is a powerful remedy.
90:4.2
The faith required to get well under the foolish
ministrations of one of these ancient shamans was, after
all, not materially different from that which is
required to experience healing at the hands of some of
his later-day successors who engage in the nonscientific
treatment of disease.
90:4.3
The more primitive tribes greatly feared the sick, and
for long ages they were carefully avoided, shamefully
neglected. It was a great advance in humanitarianism
when the evolution of shamancraft produced priests and
medicine men who consented to treat disease. Then it
became customary for the entire clan to crowd into the
sickroom to assist the shaman in howling the disease
ghosts away. It was not uncommon for a woman to be the
diagnosing shaman, while a man would administer
treatment. The usual method of diagnosing disease was to
examine the entrails of an animal.
90:4.4
Disease was treated by chanting, howling, laying on of
hands, breathing on the patient, and many other
techniques. In later times the resort to temple sleep,
during which healing supposedly took place, became
widespread. The medicine men eventually essayed actual
surgery in connection with temple slumber; among the
first operations was that of trephining the skull to
allow a headache spirit to escape. The shamans learned
to treat fractures and dislocations, to open boils and
abscesses; the shamanesses became adept at midwifery.
90:4.5
It was a common method of treatment to rub something
magical on an infected or blemished spot on the body,
throw the charm away, and supposedly experience a cure.
If anyone should chance to pick up the discarded charm,
it was believed he would immediately acquire the
infection or blemish. It was a long time before herbs
and other real medicines were introduced. Massage was
developed in connection with incantation, rubbing the
spirit out of the body, and was preceded by efforts to
rub medicine in, even as moderns attempt to rub
liniments in. Cupping and sucking the affected parts,
together with bloodletting, were thought to be of value
in getting rid of a disease-producing spirit.
90:4.6
Since water was a potent fetish, it was utilized in the
treatment of many ailments. For long it was believed
that the spirit causing the sickness could be eliminated
by sweating. Vapor baths were highly regarded; natural
hot springs soon blossomed as primitive health resorts.
Early man discovered that heat would relieve pain; he
used sunlight, fresh animal organs, hot clay, and hot
stones, and many of these methods are still employed.
Rhythm was practiced in an effort to influence the
spirits; the tom-toms were universal.
90:4.7
Among some people disease was thought to be caused by a
wicked conspiracy between spirits and animals. This gave
rise to the belief that there existed a beneficent plant
remedy for every animal-caused disease. The red men were
especially devoted to the plant theory of universal
remedies; they always put a drop of blood in the root
hole left when the plant was pulled up.
90:4.8
Fasting, dieting, and counterirritants were often used
as remedial measures. Human secretions, being definitely
magical, were highly regarded; blood and urine were thus
among the earliest medicines and were soon augmented by
roots and various salts. The shamans believed that
disease spirits could be driven out of the body by
foul-smelling and bad-tasting medicines. Purging very
early became a routine treatment, and the values of raw
cocoa and quinine were among the earliest pharmaceutical
discoveries.
90:4.9
The Greeks were the first to evolve truly rational
methods of treating the sick. Both the Greeks and the
Egyptians received their medical knowledge from the
Euphrates valley. Oil and wine was a very early medicine
for treating wounds; castor oil and opium were used by
the Sumerians. Many of these ancient and effective
secret remedies lost their power when they became known;
secrecy has always been essential to the successful
practice of fraud and superstition. Only facts and truth
court the full light of comprehension and rejoice in the
illumination and enlightenment of scientific research.
5. PRIESTS AND RITUALS
90:5.1
The essence of the ritual is the perfection of its
performance; among savages it must be practiced with
exact precision. It is only when the ritual has been
correctly carried out that the ceremony possesses
compelling power over the spirits. If the ritual is
faulty, it only arouses the anger and resentment of the
gods. Therefore, since man's slowly evolving mind
conceived that the
technique of
ritual was the decisive factor in its efficacy, it
was inevitable that the early shamans should sooner or
later evolve into a priesthood trained to direct the
meticulous practice of the ritual. And so for tens of
thousands of years endless rituals have hampered society
and cursed civilization, have been an intolerable burden
to every act of life, every racial undertaking.
90:5.2
Ritual is the technique of sanctifying custom; ritual
creates and perpetuates myths as well as contributing to
the preservation of social and religious customs. Again,
ritual itself has been fathered by myths. Rituals are
often at first social, later becoming economic and
finally acquiring the sanctity and dignity of religious
ceremonial. Ritual may be personal or group in practice
-- or both -- as illustrated by prayer, dancing, and
drama.
90:5.3
Words become a part of ritual, such as the use of terms
like amen and selah. The habit of swearing, profanity,
represents a prostitution of former ritualistic
repetition of holy names. The making of pilgrimages to
sacred shrines is a very ancient ritual. The ritual next
grew into elaborate ceremonies of purification,
cleansing, and sanctification. The initiation ceremonies
of the primitive tribal secret societies were in reality
a crude religious rite. The worship technique of the
olden mystery cults was just one long performance of
accumulated religious ritual. Ritual finally developed
into the modern types of social ceremonials and
religious worship, services embracing prayer, song,
responsive reading, and other individual and group
spiritual devotions.
90:5.4
The priests evolved from shamans up through oracles,
diviners, singers, dancers, weathermakers, guardians of
religious relics, temple custodians, and foretellers of
events, to the status of actual directors of religious
worship. Eventually the office became hereditary; a
continuous priestly caste arose.
90:5.5
As religion evolved, priests began to specialize
according to their innate talents or special
predilections. Some became singers, others prayers, and
still others sacrificers; later came the orators --
preachers. And when religion became institutionalized,
these priests claimed to "hold the keys of heaven."
90:5.6
The priests have always sought to impress and awe the
common people by conducting the religious ritual in an
ancient tongue and by sundry magical passes so to
mystify the worshipers as to enhance their own piety and
authority. The great danger in all this is that the
ritual tends to become a substitute for religion.
90:5.7
The priesthoods have done much to delay scientific
development and to hinder spiritual progress, but they
have contributed to the stabilization of civilization
and to the enhancement of certain kinds of culture. But
many modern priests have ceased to function as directors
of the ritual of the worship of God, having turned their
attention to theology -- the attempt to define God.
90:5.8
It is not denied that the priests have been a millstone
about the neck of the races, but the true religious
leaders have been invaluable in pointing the way to
higher and better realities.
90:5.9
Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.
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