Spiritualist mediums and other traditional shamans: towards an apprenticeship model of shamanic practice
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Date
01/07/2011Author
Wilson, David Gordon MacKintosh
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Abstract
Spiritualism has its origins in 1840s America, and continues to occupy a niche in the
Anglo-American cultural world in which the craft of mediumship is taught and
practised. Spiritualist mediums seek to demonstrate personal survival beyond death
and thus belong to a movement that posits the existence of a spirit world, peopled
with those who were once incarnate upon the earth and with whom communication is
possible.
Spiritualists often maintain that mediumship is a universal activity found across
cultures and time, and some scholars have speculated in passing that Spiritualist
mediumship might be a form of shamanism. This thesis uses both existing literary
sources and ethnographic study to support the hypothesis that mediumship is indeed
an example of traditional shamanism, and demonstrates that a comparison of
Spiritualist mediumship and shamanism gives valuable insights into both. In
particular, an apprenticeship model is proposed as offering a clearer understanding of
the nature of mediumship and its central role in maintaining Spiritualism as a distinct
religious tradition, helping to clarify problematic boundaries such as that between
Spiritualism and New Age.
Existing models of shamanism have tended to focus upon particular skills or states of
consciousness exhibited by shamans and are therefore framed with reference to
outcomes, rather than by attending to the processes of development leading to them.
The apprenticeship model of mediumship is proposed as the basis first, of
understanding the structure of Spiritualism, and second and comparatively, of a new
definition of shamanism, by offering a distinctive, clearly-structured approach to
understanding the acquisition and nature of shamanic skills, without being unduly
prescriptive as to which particular shamanic skills should be anticipated in any given
cultural setting.
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